Glass of Water
by lyin
Summary: It's 1976 and Hogwarts' N.E.W.T. Divination class can only see the homework in their future. Lily Evans and Sirius Black certainly can't foresee they're falling into friendship. What happens in Divination, stays in Divination.
1. the ripples and the lines

_A/N: Reviews are lovely and much loved. _

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It's 1976 and Hogwarts' N.E.W.T. Divination class can only see the homework in their future. The Divination workload's ludicrous and a week in they've all forgotten why they took it, but Professor Auriga's an easy marker and gives out molasses cookies to munch while the class studies the lumps in their tea or the inversion of their cards. Besides, the grading standards for Divination have gone so downhill in the past quarter century that anyone can pull an Acceptable, if she's a good enough liar.

Lily Evans heard as much from Sev, with his usual scorn, when it was still 1975 and they were still speaking. She doesn't need an easy mark and really she's more interested in unicorns and old magic, but Potter's carrying on with Care of Magical Creatures and Sev Snape with Ancient Runes and by the end of fifth year, all she wanted was one class free of them both. And she might not be any good at seeing her future, but she's quite the liar. She's been perfecting it since she was eleven and started at a school she couldn't tell any relations or neighbors about.

She thinks she might be the only one in the small class actually enjoying herself. September is cool and the Tower classroom isn't too muggy for now and for once, there aren't eyes on the back of her head. Lily can breathe in Divination. Despite the incense.

They all sit at a round table of shiny brown wood in the center of the room, which swivels out into four small tables when Professor Auriga raps it with her wand. There's only seven of them in the class, so they can't pair off quite right- each time one group becomes a crowded three, which makes practicing tarot reading practically impossible.

October brings unseasonable warmth and Sirius Black, who strolls into the classroom as if he'd been their eighth all along.

To Lily's dismay, he takes the seat right beside her, and while she doesn't often feel his eyes on her face, she certainly feels the bits of parchment he keeps flicking at it.

"How're you here?" she finally hisses to him one day, while Professor Auriga has the lights out to showcase a projection of the night sky on the ceiling.

He stops tearing pieces of his parchment and looks up lazily, blinking behind the dark fringe of his hair. "I walked up the stairs—"

"Oh don't be smart—how'd you get into the class a month after it's been going on? I thought you were in Arithmancy—did Potter put you up to this?" Lily's fingernails are digging into the wood of her table in annoyance.

Sirius looks away, which she takes as confirmation. "I switched. Could hardly turn me away—I got an O on my Divination O.W.L."

"Don't be ridiculous," Lily says, lowering her voice as Marlene McKinnon, across the way, gives her a warning kick as Professor Auriga moves nearer. "No one gets an O on Divination. Seers or something, maybe. Not you, Sirius," she says, his first name sounding funny on her lips. She'd meant to call him Black, but what with Auriga discussing his namesake star in the background, it sort of slipped out.

He grins, mysteriously, and she wants to strangle him, even more so when he simply lifts a finger to his lips. "Shhh," he says, "_some _of us want to learn something today."

Lily finds herself shredding her own parchment for the rest of class.

She has Herbology after Divination, and, unfortunately, so does Sirius, so they have to walk in the same direction. Lily walks very, very fast.

Sirius, it turns out, can walk faster.

"What's effin' wrong with the two of you?" Marlene McKinnon pants. She also needs Herbology, as one of the courses to get her into the Healer training program—and Divination as the easiest mark she can get, since her O.W.L.s weren't quite up to Healer requirements. For Lily, it's one too many courses with Marlene this year—the girl in her dorm she finds most insufferably boy-crazy and foul-mouthed. "Something happening at the greenhouse I don't know about?"

"I doubt that," Lily says, a little too wryly. For the past two years Marlene's name has been one of those most frequently linked with couples caught out behind the greenhouse well _after _class.

The tiny dig doesn't go unnoticed. Marlene shrugs her shoulders stiffly and falls back to walk with Hufflepuff Davy Gudgeon, and Sirius, one annoying stride ahead of her, shoots a scrutinizing look over his shoulder at Lily.

She's been refusing to speak to him on the walks over for the past few days, but, unable to tell if his look is appreciative or a reprimand, she can't quite help herself. "What?" she says snappishly.

"Judgmental today, are we, Evans?" Sirius says, not sounding even the slightest bit out of breath, and slowing his stride just enough that suddenly he's walking perfectly in sync with her.

She gives him her severest frown. "Don't you assume I'm always judgmental?"

"Always _judgmental_? No, no. Always mental? Absolutely."

"…Did you really get an O in Divination?"

He smiles sweetly, and it's not hard to see why every girl in their year—and the year above, and probably three below—are completely in love with the boy. "Would I lie to you, Lily?"

"Please, Black," she says, as they reach greenhouse number three, "we're not on a first-name basis."

He holds the glass door open for her and grins maddeningly, again, leaning enough that he's practically whispering in her ear when he says, "We are now."

James Potter is giving Sirius a very strange look as they walk in. Lily, walking to the seat Greta Catchlove, a friend of hers from Hufflepuff, is holding for her, hears an oddly familiar strangled sound from her right. She looks and immediately looks away; Severus Snape is slowly turning purple.

She tries not to feel happy about that, but while part of her feels guilty, most of her is gleefully vengeful. Her walking in with Black is probably even worse for Sev than her walking in with, say, _Potter_ would be. It's a toss-up, but she thinks right now he hates Sirius even more.

"Why's McKinnon shooting you death glares?" Greta wants to know, which Lily gives a shrug to, and then, a moment later, with a surreptitious adjustment of her robes over her curvy figure, Greta says quietly, "Don't look now, but I think Sirius Black is waving at me."

Lily turns. Sirius, sitting alone in the back of the greenhouse, is casually waving at her with the hand not busy stabbing his spade into the dirt. She suspects this is only because she is not within parchment-piece throwing distance.

She can't fathom why he's sitting alone. A casual glance in Potter's direction - which he immediately notices, causing him to adjust his glasses and stare intently directly back - shows he's partnered with Pettigrew, and while Lupin isn't in this class, there's certainly plenty of room for three at Potter's space. Surely… Potter couldn't have exiled his best friend to the back of the class just because he'd walked to class with her… right?

Lily, perturbed, gives Sirius a little wave back. She isn't quite sure why, but she almost feels sorry for him, even more so when it seems to perk him right up. Potter, still staring back at her, knocks over his pot after witnessing this little exchange. The small shrubbery makes whimpering noises from the greenhouse floor and Potter apologizes dramatically as he cleans it up.

She can feel Potter's eyes on the back of her head, and Snape's too. She sneaks a glance back at Sirius to see if he's staring at her too, but he's finished tucking in his shrubbery and is staring blankly at the ceiling and doesn't even seem to notice she's looking. It's a bit disconcerting; Lily's grown very used to having the bloke she's looking at staring right back (and she has to wonder how Sev and Potter get any work done at all, given that anytime she so much as spots them in her peripheral vision both boys' attention is very decidedly locked on her instead of the lesson plan.)

It's another two days before she has Divination again, but Lily, instead of pretending Sirius didn't exist unless she was forced to accept it by him being right in her line of sight, finds herself looking out for him. Something's wrong, it seems—he's not at dinner, and during lunch period he never seems to sit down—he's swaggering around a bunch of Hufflepuff fourth years, all girls and mostly blondes; taunting the Slytherin fifth years, otherwise known as his brother Regulus and company; and lurking around the edges of the table where James Potter is sitting with Remus and Peter in a manner Lily would have thought awkward had it been anyone but Sirius Black.

Despite herself, Lily finds herself watching the other Marauders, too. Peter's eyes skitter to locate Sirius every few moments or so and he looks terribly anxious, Remus studies while he eats and keeps his eyes locked firmly on his textbook, and while she most absolutely does not spend a lot of time watching James Potter eat his lunch, she's never seen him so engrossed in a ham sandwich before.

"Why're are we looking at James?" Mary Macdonald asks, pausing mid-bite. Mary, though a year younger than Lily, is her closest girl friend – her best friend overall, with Snape out of the picture now. Their friendship was sealed Mary's second week at school, when Lily slammed Mulciber with a bad case of buttock-boils after finding him keeping the first year under the Jelly Legs hex and shoving the stumbling Mary around for his friends' amusement.

Lily, very quickly, looks down at her own lunch. "Maybe_ you_ were looking at Potter, I was looking at- Lupin- doesn't he look a bit, a bit peaky to you?"

Mary pretends to play with one side of her nut-brown hair and steals a glance. "No peakier than usual. James looks sad, what'd you do to him now?"

Lily, choking on the water in her drinking goblet, sputters, "Me? I didn't do anything. I think he's rowing with Siri- …Black."

It's Mary's turn to choke. "You can't be seri- you're kidding. They never row. Ever. Not to say I haven't seen James yell at Sirius – just last week he was telling him and Peter off for harassing a couple second years – but Sirius never, never goes against James. None of them do, they all follow him around like a bunch of, I don't know, puppies or something."

Lily rolls her eyes. "That makes them sound considerably more adorable than they are, Mary."

Mary fiddles with her piece of bread, looking shyly over to where Sirius is standing now, seemingly having a fascinating conversation with Nearly Headless Nick right in James' line of vision. "I know you'd rather not hear it, Lily, but it's hard to deny that the lot of them are _quite _adorable. Even Peter, in a- y'know, in a bit of a pathetic way." Mary pauses. "You have to at least admit Sirius is handsome, even if James or Remus isn't quite your type-"

Lily scoffs slightly and eyes Sirius over her water glass. "Too pretty."

Mary gasps and signals desperately to someone behind Lily's head. Marlene McKinnon plops her lunch down next to them, to Lily's dismay, and waits expectantly for Mary to speak. Normally Marlene would sit with Gladys Gudgeon and Felicia Fortescue, other Gryffindor girls in their year who Lily got on with well enough, but had never become close with outside of school. "Marlene, could you please back me up- Sirius Black's not too pretty, is he?" Mary inclines her head towards him for good measure.

"Don't be ridiculous," Marlene says. "There's no such thing as too pretty. Why, you fancy Black now, Lily? Is that Potter's problem with him?"

"Wouldn't know, couldn't care. How's Gideon, Marlene?" Lily says, referring to the one of the recently-graduated Prewett brothers who Marlene had been seeing on and off for the past two years.

Marlene's eyes narrow cattily at the change in topic. "He's swell. Not quite as pretty as Black, of course, but I reckon he's coming along alright. Says he'll be up to meet me in Hogsmeade our first weekend out, I'll tell him you were asking about his general well-being and all. Any Hogsmeade plans yourself, Lils?"

Lily absolutely hates when people shorten her name. It's only two syllables, is there really a need to cut it down even more? "Unless I decide to ask Black," Lily says, stressing the withering sarcasm, "I'll be spending Saturday picking out exciting new colors of ink."

"Ooh, I'll come with," Mary says, "Felicia has that raspberry-colored ink from Flourish & Blotts and I want to see if Scrivenshaft's has it in."

"Scintillating," Marlene says, pursing her lips but failing to keep them from turning up at the corners. She waves over Gladys Gudgeon and Lily realizes that somehow, she's about to have lunch with more girls in her own year than she has since her second year. Lunch used to be the one time in her day practically reserved for Severus.

She has Divination again the next day, after N.E.W.T. Potions. Severus has been shooting her looks all class and trying to catch her attention as they file out, so she hustles out and up the dungeon stairs. She turns the corner to the main corridor so quickly she bumps smack into James Potter's chest.

"Well hello," he says, sounding a bit befuddled, possibly because his glasses have just landed in her hair.

She pulls them out, quickly, and frantically brushes off a dark red strand that caught around the wire frames. She's not really sure what Potter would do with a strand of her hair but figures she's better off hanging onto it. "Sorry," she says, shoving them into his hand and side-stepping as quickly as possible.

Sirius, who must have been on Potter's heels, is suddenly on hers. "Don't you think it's a little scary how that creep's got his eyes on you all hours of the day—and I suspect you'd rather not wonder what he thinks about at ni—"

"Oh, that's nice to say about your best friend, Black," Lily says, rather shocked.

"What? Not James! Snivellus! Obviously!"

"Is he still following?" Lily says, sighing and fighting the impulse to look, since that would probably encourage Sev, "and he has Ancient Runes next, that's in the opposite direction—" _Poor thing_, she thinks, but won't add that in front of Sirius.

"Want me to hex him for you?" Sirius says, almost hopefully.

"No," Lily says adamantly, raising her book so it's poised to knock his wand hand down should he take the initiative anyway.

They reach the stairs of the North Tower and Sirius bounds up them three at a time. "I'll save you a seat," he calls. She sighs again, more heavily this time, with a vague, and strangely guilty, recollection of Sirius budging over to make room for her at their very first welcoming feast—a seat she turned her nose up at. Well, he had been an awful little prat to Sev on the train—and before that Sirius and Potter both had sat there and both looked away while she cried in the corner over going away to school and Tuney being so mean.

"I don't believe you," a strangled voice says from behind her. Lily whirls on her heel, book still in menacing position. Severus eyes it skeptically. "_Black_, Lily? Potter's bad enough, but consorting with his homicidal mad dog lackey—"

"I am not consorting," Lily says hotly, and then, after a moment's thought, "and whatever else Sirius may be, I hardly think homicidal's fair—"

Severus smiles bitterly. "Shows how well you know him," he says coolly. "Even his mates have seen him for what he is—ask Lupin what he thinks of his good friend_ Sirius_ after his latest bout with that oh-so-regular _illness _of his. Go on, then—or are you afraid to hear what's behind Black's appealing façade?"

"See, even Snape thinks Black's pretty," Marlene McKinnon says, all out-of-breath. Severus nearly jumps up the first stair at the sudden interruption, but manages to give Marlene a look that could curl her hair anyways. "Sorry to interrupt your heart-to-heart and all, but if you could, y'know, budge, I'm late. Oh, and so are you, Lily," she adds, as she shoves past them without further apology.

Lily, startled into action but mulling over Severus' cryptic challenge, puts one foot on the stair. "I don't care what you think," she says to him. "Not anymore. And, you know what, I can consort with whomever I damn well please." She turns, hair flying behind her, and races up the stairs so she doesn't have to hear his snarky reply. Knowing him, it would be spot-on and trouble her all day.

Sirius has his legs propped up on the chair across from him at the table when Lily darts into the classroom at the top of the winding flight of stairs, panting more heavily than Marlene had been at the bottom. He swings them to the floor and gestures to the seat as if to say, _there you go_. She hesitates a moment as she takes in the rest of the class. Everyone is sitting in pairs, Marlene with Felicia Fortescue, the only other Gryffindor in the class; Davy Gudgeon with Grace Hornby, both Hufflepuffs; Ravenclaw's Charity Burbage warily eyeing her sullen opposite, Evan Rosier of Slytherin. She briefly allowed herself the fantasy of asking Felicia or Marlene to switch with her—even Marlene, who was taken, would hardly object to pairing up with Sirius Black—but feeling that would be a very first-year-ish move, moved towards Sirius resignedly.

His mouth is full with one of Auriga's molasses cookies, but he points to the small basin of water in front of them. It seems they're into hydromancy today. Lily tips her face down to study it more carefully and immediately is struck by several droplets of water as Sirius flicks some up onto her face.

She tries to keep a straight face, but mad or not, it's hard to keep from catching Sirius Black's boyish glee. She also fervently hopes that if they touch on pyromancy this year, she won't be partnered with Sirius when he's given permission to play with fire.

"You can go first," he says, after swallowing. He gestures to the small pile of pebbles and simple silver ring on a string in front of them, which Professor Auriga is trying to explain how to utilize, despite the fact that as usual, no one is paying attention. He idly flips open the text book beside him and finds the correct page with such ease Lily would've thought he'd prepared, if she didn't know better. She gets the number off him and turns to page 127, but a quick look tells her the book won't help as much as she'd like—in N.E.W.T. Divination, everything's open to interpretation.

She tosses a pebble into the basin with more force than she meant to and watches as the ripples expand all the way to the edges. "Tell me my future, then," she says to Sirius Black, and it surprises Lily how much her words sound like a dare.

He quirks one eyebrow up—a trick she can't get the hang of at all, though Potter and all his cronies _and_ Severus and all of Slytherin house seem to have it down pat—then rests his fingers on the basin while he gazes into it. In a moment he starts to drum them against it.

"And don't say you see James Potter in it," she adds warningly, unwittingly drumming her wand against the hardwood to the same beat. "He's been reading that in my tea since third year and it hardly got _him_ into N.E.W.T. Divination."

"It's not like I saw being in this class coming, so don't expect any marvelous insights from me," he drawls.

"Nothing_ outstanding_?" For once he didn't rise to the bait, but stared distractedly at something over her shoulder. "At least come up with something that's in front of me."

"Trouble," he said, eyes scanning everywhere but her face.

"Describing yourself doesn't count-"

"I don't mean me sitting in front of you," Sirius says, quietly, intently and very suddenly looking right at her. "Evans isn't a wizarding name and sorry, but that's not going to make your post-graduate life a picnic, not when it's names and blood and grudges our world's about to combust over. Not to mention this year and the next'll be going rougher for you than they have before— now that you and Snivellus are quits, you're fair game so far as Mulciber and Avery and our man Rosier over there see it."

Her throat tightens instinctively. "I haven't had any more trouble than usual," Lily says stiffly.

The flash of Sirius' teeth is lightning-white in the dim classroom. "That's because James hexes them blind behind your back every time they so much as finger their wands around you."

Somehow, Lily feels as if she already knew this, but she's outraged anyways, and at Potter, at that, rather than the Slytherins. She'd like to shake that boy silly and let him know she can carry her own weight just fine, thank you very much, and—and … she lets that half-formed thought tumble out her ears like an unheard phrase. She's distracted back to the moment as Sirius casually says, "And I help, some."

Oh, she bets he does. She makes an effort not to roll her eyes – her mother tells her it's an extraordinarily unattractive look on her, and Lily finds herself doing it far too often – and looks down instead. The ripples have long faded from the water, making the exercise practically pointless, and she trails her fingers over the surface, not letting them breach the film of the surface. "Your turn."

"I haven't even properly predicted anything about you, though," Sirius says.

"Trouble, remember?" Lily says dryly.

"That's what I said, not what the ripples said."

"Sirius, if the lines in a glass of water actually speak to you, maybe you deserved your O."

He looks at her like she's speaking Gobbledegook. "It's a basin," he says, tapping it

"Toss your pebble, Black," she says, grouchily.

"The slightest provocation and we're not so friendly anymore, hmm, Evans?"

It's her turn to stare, right as Professor Auriga calls they're all through and warns them the tables are about to swivel back to center, so she figures she'll just have to make something up for Black's future. A career in magical demolitions, perhaps, signified by an exorbitantly large splash? She mentally winces but can't think of anything better to go on. "I wouldn't call it friendly," she says, hedging.

Sirius tosses in a pebble, casually, then holds his hands up in surrender. "I fully understand. What happens in Divination, stays in Divination."

"Oh shut up," Lily says, stumped for any clever retort.

"Excuse me?" Professor Auriga says sharply.

Sirius quickly covers and explains that Lily was actually talking to the basin of water, which, apparently, was telling her quite depressing things about his future—which seems to placate the professor surprisingly well.

Lily finds herself with a headache for the remainder of class and darts for the nearest girls' bathroom the moment it lets out, to avoid altogether the issue of walking with Sirius again. She feels rather sorry, though, and strangely responsible, when he never shows up in Herbology that day at all.

Severus, again, tries to catch her attention at the end of class, moving to grab her arm, but Potter barrels right past him. He's flanked by Pettigrew, with Lupin dawdling behind. "Evans," James says, rather urgently and a little too near to her ear, while Severus slinks away towards Avery, who's waiting for him.

"I'm not going to Hogsmeade with you this weekend, Potter," Lily says reflexively, flicking the air between them with her arm as if she could swat him away.

"Yeah, I wasn't asking— did you see where Sirius got too?"

"No," she says, and keeps along the path back to the castle. He keeps following. "And really Potter, you could use a jacket."

He gives the sunshine a skeptical look. "Concerned about my well-being now, are we?"

"I thought you might use it to defrost that cold shoulder you're giving your friend," Lily says coolly.

"Oh aren't we clever today," James says, his eyebrows disappearing into his muss of hair.

"Quite generous of you to include yourself in my cleverness-"

"Look," he cuts her off, which takes Lily aback. James Potter rarely bails on an opportunity to banter with her, "if you see him, tell him—that—"

"You were asking?"

"That'll do," James says, rubbing at his eyes. "Wormtail, Moony, onward and upward," and he picks up the pace- again with the annoyingly long legs, thinks Lily- and passes her without a backward glance. She gets one from Peter, an anxious, searching look, as if she has Sirius tucked up her robes sleeve.

Remus gives her a vague smile as he falls into line with her.

"You feeling alright?" she asks lowly, and watches as an almost convulsive twitch passes over his face. He can't disguise the slight wince to his mouth and Lily regrets asking at once. She can't guess how many times he's been asked that over the years, as he does seem to eternally look rundown, but accustomed as she is to him, Remus looks even more run ragged than usual. "I know you'll say you're fine," Lily adds, as his lips just begin to form the words, "and I suppose I'm not the person you'd tell if you're not- fine, that is- but I'm trying to-"

"Be kind?" Remus says, wryly, and there's a bristle behind his words posed to ward off pity.

Lily flushed. "Be a friend."

"You seem to be making a few of those lately," Remus says lightly, and Lily can't help but roll her eyes.

"It isn't as if I'm hanging about with Black around the common room or I dunno, going with him to Hogsmeade—one class with him without you lot and… it is a bit strange, though, him switching into a class without even one of you…"

"You'll have to excuse me, Lily," Remus says politely, "I'm afraid I'm running behind for my next class."

It's rather astounding how quickly someone so ill-looking can breeze right past her. Lily stops in her tracks, crinkling her forehead in thought and annoyance, silently weighing James and Peter's anxiousness against Remus' feigning of cool disinterest. She's struck by a thought.

Right as several Hufflepuffs coming up behind her try to pass her, she readjusts the strap of her book satchel on her shoulder and chases after them towards the castle entrance. Remus seemed to have rejoined his friends without much difficulty, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with James, with Peter bringing up the rear on his shorter legs. Lily can sympathize—but when it comes to catching up with _Peter_, she's the one with the advantage.

He's about to turn into the stairwell behind James and Remus when Lily yanks his arm and pulls him back towards the grass and around the corner. Peter's eyes go immediately wide and wary.

"Is, ah, something the matter, Eva… Lily?" he says, voice squeaking slightly. He clears his throat and looks back around the bend, clearly expecting his friends to be waiting for him as he and James had slowed down for Remus, but James and Remus have continued trotting on, oblivious to the loss of their shadow. Peter's face falls.

"I need your help for a minute, Peter," Lily says, thinking fast as she spots the glaze of suspicion settling over his eyes, "and I'm hoping you'll keep this between us, but… I'm considering switching out of Divination," she says in a rush, as if it was a confession. "I was wondering what you thought of Arithmancy, 'cause that's at the same time, right…?"

"Well, sure, I'm not in Arithmancy," Peter says, bewildered.

"Oh," Lily says, trying to match the confusion in his tone. "I could've sworn… is it just James, then?"

"No, not James, Remus and Siri-" Peter clams up, quickly, and the suspicion in his eyes, which had been slowly thawing, has slid back in at full force.

"Oh, silly me, I suppose I should have asked Remus then," Lily says, forcing a giggle and trying to sound flighty and foolish, like so many girls she knows. Unfortunately she's never been remotely convincing at playing dumb, and Peter looks like he wants to hit himself- or her- in the head.

"Sorry I can't help, and I've got to go, I'm going to be late for class," Peter says, echoing Remus' excuse—as if James Potter's gang ever bothered with arriving on time for class. He darts around her and Lily watches yet another boy hurry away from her. It's getting to be a habit lately.

Next time she finds Sirius Black, she decides, she won't be letting him get away as easily as that—at least not before why she figures out why he would want so badly to steer clear of Remus Lupin that he'd go to the trouble of switching out of the class they'd had together.


	2. scared of losing all the time

Lily keeps an eye out while passing corners or corridors but doesn't see so much as a shadow of Sirius on her way back to her dormitory. She's surprised to find all her dormmates in residence, in a small cluster around one of the middle beds, even Annabeth Inglebee, who spends most of her time with her friends and boyfriend in Ravenclaw. Lily can practically feel the swell of drama in the room and considers doubling back. She has no sympathy for the usual silliness and isn't of a mind to pretend—and she's always out of the loop on the castle gossip, anyway.

Felicia Fortescue is all a-flush and flutter, hugging herself and turning slightly in place, like a music box figure. Felicia has wispy golden hair, a wispy smile and is wisp-thin besides, sugar-sweet as the ice cream at her grandfather's parlor on Diagon Alley, where she is very generous in getting her friends free helpings. Lily tries very hard to like her, but Felicia is so darn accommodating and agreeable it drives Lily out of her mind; she expects her fellow Gryffindors to show some spine.

"Why you, though?" Gladys Gudgeon is saying, with a pout in Felicia's general direction, followed by a significant look directed towards Annabeth.

Felicia's face falls, wounded, and Marlene, draped across her bed, looks up sharply. She draws in her sprawling limbs and sits up, still sucking on the end of a Sugar Quill she seems to have been writing a letter with. "Why _not_ Fee?"

"Why not Fee what?" Lily says warily, stopped by the side of the room since she doesn't want to try squeezing by Gladys and Fee, not with the charged current running through and around them.

Fee blushes and lifts her hands to run through her fine hair, which is tangled and a bit damp-looking. She mumbles something.

"Sorry?" Lily says.

"Sirius Black," translates Ann, who seems to be having trouble maintaining her usual look of ennui. "She skipped Herbology to, erm, be with Sirius Black."

"Be with?" Lily says, her mind going places she'd really it rather not.

"Ahh, don't look all judgy, Lils," Marlene says snappily. "Not everyone's _me_. Fee got herself a good snog, s'all. Ought to try it sometime yourself, you've got enough boyos game."

Lily truly hates her in that a moment. "Them being game doesn't make me," she says, voice low. It takes effort to keep it from growing too tight. "As you said, _Marley_, not everyone's you."

The only sounds in the room are Gladys' strongly indrawn breath and the rustle of Marlene's paper as her hand clenches reflexively on it. "Yeah, and a fecking tragedy it is," Marlene says at last, lightly, but her lilting accent flies up and down in pitch like she's practicing scales. "There'd be a lot more in the way of spectacular rollick and ruckus, and a good sight less holier-than-thou glowers."

"Don't underestimate a good glower," says Lily coolly. "You never regret one in the morning."

She can see Marlene's eyes dart to her wand on the bedside table. Marlene's not nearly as good a student as she is, but Lily's seen Marlene work hours to master charms and Potions theorems that didn't come easily. Aside from having Quidditch reflexes, even if Marlene is spends half the time only on reserve, they've also all heard her brag how she gets away with as much magic practice as she'd like in the summers under her family roof. They've never been paired against each other in Dueling Club, as pairs are usually matched one House against another, but still, last year, Lily had been beyond certain she could take her down in any war of wits or wands. This year it's already been clear from the first few Transfiguration and DADA classes that Marlene'd used her unfair advantage of summering in an apparently lawless wizarding home to get better, while Lily spent it with her fingers itching for her wand, with the harmless Zonko's products she brought home the nearest she could get to magic. The itch for her wand is back in her fingers now, and here, she's free to draw.

"Can we get back to how Felicia bagged Black?" Gladys says, her annoyance barely covering the anxiousness pervading the dorm.

"Bagged?" Lily says, pulled away from her thoughts by the word and all its assumptions, and would have forgotten Marlene entirely, except that the other girl had spoken simultaneously, her own gaze drawn away from Lily over to Felicia with crinkled concern.

"Well yeah," Gladys says, snorting faintly. "It's not as if he goes pulling girls into closets every day."

"Yes, it is usually the other way around," Ann says in a murmur. She flushes when the attention suddenly swerves her way. "Er, Ravenclaw gossip tends to be rather on the mark."

"And again, _why Fee_?" Gladys says, though her sigh says '_why not me_?'.

Felicia's happy glow has dimmed to a timid, wary look, and Lily finds it rather like watching a plucked flower dry and fade, without ever being placed in a saving vase. She'd like to say something to make her feel better, but her thoughts on Sirius' motives right now are hardly kind, and the softest of them, that unquestioning Fee is precisely the sort of girl a bloke might choose as balm for loneliness, is not going to make anything better.

"I wouldn't know," Fee says, a bit dizzily. "He said—he was standing in the hall, and he saw me and asked which way I was walking, and he walked a while with me and was saying such— terribly _wild_ things that I said he shouldn't, about the Ministry, and Professor Dumbledore, and all that Death Eating business in the papers. He didn't—say much of anything about me, really, but he was looking at me like I was, well, pretty-"

"Because you are pretty, you nit," says Marlene, grumpily, trying to smooth out the crinkles in her letter, presumably another one to Gideon Prewett.

Fee's cheeks tinges an even hotter shade of pink and she twirls her wispy hair around her hand till it looks like cotton candy on a stick. "Thanks. And then he asked if I liked him, and he seemed so terribly ser- well, earnest—and I said, well, yes—and that's when it happened. When he—kissed me. You heard that part. Well, he walked me to that empty third floor corridor first. Then," she says and purses her lips in a little confused frown.

Lily, to her dismay, can't help but picture it, a little too vividly for comfort. She feels a headache coming.

"And what did he say after?" Ann says, in her usual, matter-of-fact way.

Marlene throws down her quill and shoots Ann a look that could kill. Lily glances Marlene's way, sharply, and accidentally meets her eyes, and despite the fact she was ready to curse her a scarce minute before and is more than willing now, the understanding's almost instant. They both know full well this isn't going anywhere but heartache for Fee and there's nothing, really, they can do about it. Marlene looks away first, her scowl darkening, but Lily files away the impression of Marlene trying to protect her friend, to add to the short list of reasons she should try to like her.

"Right, thanks," Fee says, nodding.

Ann frowns. "What, for asking you about it?"

"No, that's what he said," Fee says. "'Right, thanks.' Then he walked off."

Lily sits down on the nearest bed, rolling her wand between her hands.

"What'd you say?" Gladys says, still enviously.

Fee looks at the ceiling thoughtfully, eyes faraway. "Not much of anything, I don't think. I was trying to breathe again. Do you—what do you think he meant by it?"

No one will look at her, except Lily, and it's all she can do not to look sorry for her, shrugging and looking puzzled with every inch of the liar in her.

"Does it have to mean something?" Marlene says, clearly trying for conciliatory and sounding panicked. "A snog's a snog."

Fee smiles, and it's as wispy as the rest of her, or wistful, maybe. "It's nothing, then, you think," she says, and Gladys gasps dramatically. "Oh, I was so afraid you'd say that…"

"She didn't say that, though," Ann says, calmly, "and I wouldn't weigh too much on it, as Marlene thinks of all of that sort of thing is nothing, doesn't she? Only a good time?" Ann ignores Marlene's sudden oath to nod at Lily. "Isn't that what Lily was just saying?"

"Not precisely," Lily says, lowly but with enough strength to make sure they all hear her. Marlene is on her feet, gathering up her papers with stiff back and ignoring Felicia's quiet attempts to get her attention and presumably soothe her pride. "I wouldn't suppose Marlene thinks of Gideon as nothing."

Marlene looks at her sharply, and Lily doesn't know what to make of her expression, or even want to try. "You better bleedin' bet she doesn't," she says, chin high, and throws a rude gesture at Ann. She stalks out, throwing open the dormitory dorm so that it bangs against the wall.

Ann rests her chin in her hand, scrutinizing Marlene's exit. "I truly didn't say anything you hadn't at least implied, Lily," Ann says, perturbed.

"Yes," Lily says, reluctantly. "I think it was more the… timing." She wishes Mary were in her year or that Greta had been sorted into Gryffindor, so that she had some real ally here in the dorm. She seems always to find herself in crowds or alone, and uncomfortable with both, though it seems to have given her a reputation for being simultaneously popular and independent. Everyone becomes more horrid in packs, while she likes them much more one-on-one, from Sev and his awful Slytherin friends who had ruined everything, all of her dormmates, Sirius and Remus and Peter and… well, Potter, she didn't get along with either way, so she supposed he was the rule-proving exception. Something about one-on-one put her at ease, let her be secure instead of all the work she found herself doing among a group, such a lot of fibbing and politeness that left her unsure if she really got along with any one of them at all.

"Right, fine," Gladys says, waving her hand dismissively. "Could we get back to hearing how he used his tongue? You did say there was tongue?"

Felicia's nose wobbles like a rabbit's, and Lily feels a wave of claustrophobia upon realizing she's about to burst into tears. With a soft sound of distress, Fee begins to cry, perfect teardrops leaking out and trailing down her coloring cheeks.

"Oh no," Ann says but doesn't do anything except look at her curiously, and Gladys, anxiously, and with a hint of disbelief, is questioning whether Sirius wasn't very good after all, then, and Marlene's off in her huff. So Lily slides over to Felicia and lightly pats her upper back, ignoring the wicked side of her that's jealous of how picture-perfectly Felicia cries, when Lily's own face turns blotchy and the same shade as her hair, and stays that way for far too long.

"I'm going to get you a warm washcloth," Lily says, getting up slowly, and resolving to rush to the fifth year girls' dorm to see if she can grab Mary as well, because Mary can coo and cluck with the best of them, while she'd rather go shout at someone on her friend's behalf. She feels odd playing this role, when she's not close to Felicia, not really, not like she's close to Mary, or… or… She shakes off the discomfort she suddenly feels. "I'll be right back," she says.

It's hours later, and Felicia's still vacillating between hope and despair on whether Sirius likes her at all, and what kind of a girl does that make her if she kisses a boy who doesn't even care about her (Marlene, by then returned from the Owlery and wherever else she'd been stomping around, and having passed out a secret stash of chocolates from under her bed as if in restitution, tightened her jaw at that but refrained from comment), when Lily manages to slip out for a moment alone.

The common room is dead and cold, all the lamplight gone for the night, leaving only the flickering fire to cast strange shapes on the wall. She heads to the sofa to sit for a minute, catch a moment of real rest on a night when the lights seem likely to stay on all night in her room (Ann opted to try to sleep, and is making harassed noises and pointedly tossing from underneath the covers she'd pulled over her head). Lily's going to have to fake her way through a few of her classes tomorrow, not having gotten to the readings as she'd planned, and is steeling herself for a long day.

She stops before trying to sit down, because the couch is taken, the shape of a figure revealed by the weak firelight in dramatic chiaroscuro. Lily, instinctively, grabs the nearest object, a book someone has left lying on a nearby table, and pelts it at Sirius Black.

He awakens frighteningly fast, sitting bolt upright like a Muggle movie monster come to life and springing to his feet. "I'm not hurting anything, staying here," he snarls, if a bit blearily, "so you can f— oh, it's you. What do you want?"

There aren't any more convenient books to throw at him. "What is _wrong _with you, Black?"

His scowl is rather ominous, with the left side of his face cast in the red glow of the fire and the right side bleeding into the darkness. "It's a very comfortable sofa."

"No, I don't care why you're sleeping in the common room, it's that you're an inconsiderate ogre of a— actually, I do care, why _are _you sleeping in the common room?" She crosses her arms in annoyance at his sudden stubborn silence. "You're really that afraid of your friends?

Sirius shoulders the question aside, half-turning away and glowering darkly. "I'm not afraid of anything," he says, with a scoff that sounds like a blunt bark.

It's such a stupid boyish piece of rubbish bravado that part of Lily just wants to hug him, because to her it's somehow clear as morning water that he's bally well terrified. Maybe because in spite of what everyone in school might think, she knows a thing or two about being lonely, even when she's in a gaggle of girls. Strange how she feels more connected here, in Sirius' sullen company, than upstairs in her dorm, and she has to desperately cast aside thoughts to avoid drawing parallels to her time around Sev.

"Don't bluster with me," Lily says. "I know full well you ducked out of Arithmancy because you didn't want to be alone with Remus and if you were so fearless you'd be up in your own bed— and it must have been something quite awful you did to him, if you don't even have to nerve to simply hide behind your canopy drapes."

Sirius is taken aback, to the point of literally stepping away from her. "Why do you assume it's something_ I_ did to _him_?" he says, voice rising heatedly.

It was an assumption, at that— a feeling, mostly, that Lily suddenly _knows _was dead-on. "Potter wouldn't have taken his side, otherwise."

Sirius goes very, very still, staring at his hands, and then he sits and covers his face with them. She waits for him to say something, or even to shake with emotion, tears, laughter even, but he simply sits breathing into his big palms, dark hair flopping over his fingertips. Gingerly, she sits down next to him, though keeping a good few inches away and, with some consideration, deciding not to lift a hand to pat his back. He looks too violently tense, as if he might strike out at any contact.

"I don't approve of moping," Lily says at last, with enough petulance to pull him out of his reverie and look over at her. "It's self-indulgent and doesn't make anything better. It's slightly above truly taking your feelings out on others, but wallowing manages to inflict misery on those unfortunate enough to be nearby almost as effectively. And I'm sure you've been rotten, Sirius— you certainly were to Felicia— and I'm not about to feel sorry for you, honestly, so please— stop that and sit up straight."

He sits up like a bolt. "I wasn't rotten to Felicia," he says, "it's not like she was complaining— "

"Do you like her?"

Sirius looks at her with some trepidation. "Do you _care_?"

"Yes. For her," says Lily, and finds she does, even if she still can't bring herself to truly like Felicia. "She's a friend, of sorts, and you've turned her all… out of sorts. Why'd you pull her into your— your whole — " She flops her hand in his direction. "You?"

"Er," Sirius says, with an expression Lily doesn't like. "She was there?"

She moves to punch him in the shoulder, not affectionately, but draws it back at the last second and claps her fist against her forehead instead. The wild look in his eyes when he caught sight of her clenched fist made her think he might raise a hand against her should she even casually strike him. He stays tensed in preemptive recoil for a moment before slumping with a low chuckle. "Knew it wasn't nice," he says. "Still felt good to do it. And I'm not sorry in the slightest."

Lily isn't quite sure which thing he's talking about anymore. "Sounds like a very good way to go about hurting people."

His eyes look wounded into anger. "Some people deserve it."

"_Felicia_ deserves to be hurt?"

"No, not— aghh, I was forgetting about that," Sirius says, and Lily can't help but think that's exactly the point, that's why Felicia's upstairs crying, since she won't forget it and Sirius already might as well have. "I don't see that she'll care much for very long about it— it was only a snog."

Well, that sounded familiar. "And that's all well and good if it's Marlene you're snogging, but— "

"_McKinnon_? What?"

"Kisses aren't silly throwaway things for everyone, Sirius. That's all. People aren't playthings in some great prank."

"…Think our pranks are great, do you?"

He sounded like Potter, trying to turn her words around and rearrange them into compliments. "It's like everyone said last year after Davy Gudgeon took that idiot dare by that god-awful tree— good fun right up until someone loses an eye."

"He only _nearly_ lost his eye," Sirius says. She wonders if he was the darer. The whole school had thought it was one of Potter's bunch, though no one could prove it and Davy stubbornly refused to implicate anyone in his Whomping Willow Incident.

"But he very well might have."

"Oh, _might have_," Sirius says, scornfully. "The key is didn't. Nobody died. 'Might' have! Stupidest words in the language. If I ever become the sort of coot who goes about whinging over 'might haves' and waxing on about yesterdays, please, Lily, put me out of my misery."

She's a bit preoccupied by Sirius' words 'nobody died,' because the passion and frustration tumbling out of him seems too much for a hyperbole about Davy Gudgeon. It seems to suggest instead that someone actually might have died, and recently. "If I happen to still know you then," she says, absently, "I wouldn't let you get that far along. I've told you my thoughts on wallowing. In any case I'm sure you'd be able to find some woman willing to wipe you out of the world."

He does grin at that, though it doesn't sweep the storm clouds from his eyes. "There's at least four in my family."

"Your house must be very interesting, then," Lily says, thinking rather wryly of Petunia and wondering if Sirius has sisters. She's never bothered to find out— she never knew he had a brother until it was announced Regulus Black was Sorted into Slytherin.

"Believe me, it mustn't. Particularly as I don't live there anymore."

Lily sits up straighter at this sudden information. She's dying to pry, to ask since when and why and who does he live with, anyhow, and is a little frightened by how truly isolate this makes Sirius Black, sans family, divided from his friends. She thinks he's tempting her to ask, but whether because he genuinely wants to share or if he's looking for an excuse to grow angry with her, she decides not to, mostly to spite him, partly in an effort to keep the conversation from delving into the dark spots of Black's life.

"I suppose any place would be less interesting without you," Lily says lightly.

Sirius shifts, his head back on the plush couch but turned towards her, and he doesn't look pleased, like she expected. Just thoughtful, which from Sirius, is a bit unnerving. "Some people think less interesting's a good thing."

"Yes, but I don't think James Potter's one of them," Lily says, exasperated. "Or Remus, despite whatever's happened that had you reckoning him as a person who deserves to be hurt—"

Sirius laughs, but it's that strangled sound he sometimes makes, the one that reminds her of a dying animal. It's somehow a sadder sound than any of the various sobs she's heard in six years of living in a girls' dorm. "I wasn't trying to hurt _him_."

"Then aren't you sorry that you did?" she says quietly.

Sirius lets out a last hum of a laugh, shaking his head. "Remus's overreacting," he says. "No, I'm not _sorry_. I am sorry it went off like it did, but he had it coming."

"Was it worth it, though?" Lily say, leaning to try to force him to look her in the eye. She grabs his arm lightly, trying to make the gesture seem determined rather than uncertain. He stares at her fingers before finally squarely meeting her gaze, challenge on his face. She's come up with exactly what to say to his lack of apology, almost tuning Sirius' last words out in the thinking of it. "Look at you— all by yourself, when you're so absolutely awful at being alone— so much so you're clutching at Fee, and, I suppose, _me_, in a way. Whatever 'great prank' this event of yours was, you're the only one laughing. Can you say it was worth it?"

Sirius' lips part to answer, and he hesitates, frozen between yes and no, looking where he was sleeping. It's just enough time for Lily's mind to catch up, and her loose grip on Sirius' arm slackens to a mere touch at a sudden thought. "Wait," she says, her stomach roiling. Her thoughts are curdling, thinking of the only nemesis Sirius might consider worth a prank, thinking of how Sirius had said 'nobody died,' of Sirius being called 'homicidal'—and who by. "Wait, who had it coming?

"Let it alone, Evans," a voice says from behind them. Lily's head whips around so quickly that she feels an ache in her neck.

Of course it's Potter standing there, in his stupid flannel pajamas. Somehow he always shows up at the moments she most wishes he wouldn't, and always, he manages to make himself the center of what's going on. She notices, suddenly, her hand is still resting on Sirius' forearm, and though Potter almost seems to be staring through them rather than any point in particular, she slides her hand off, quickly and with an annoying sense of being caught out.

"Prongs," Sirius says, and despite the darkness of the room his whole face seems to light with hope, even tempered by alarm.

"Sirius," James says tiredly. Lily doesn't quite get why, but she can judge from Sirius' reaction that using his name is somehow a slap, a distancing, like when she slips back into calling him 'Black'. James hasn't looked at her, which is so odd it gives Lily chills. It's usually the first thing he seems to do upon entering a room with her in it, acknowledging her with a wink or nod and smirking at her cool glare in response.

Lily, slowly, rises to her feet, looking between them. "James," she says sharply, figuring she might as well get in on the name game. His gaze whips over to hers and she wonders how many handful of times she's called him by his given name to his face in the past six years, because sleepy as his eyes are, he's suddenly intent on and wary of her. "I wasn't aware Sirius was an 'it'—"

His eyes flare awake. "You know that's not what I—"

"I don't know anything— about you," she adds hastily, realizing her words were about to give him a too-easy mark, "though I can only assume your mother never taught you it's_ rude_ to interrupt a personal conversation—"

"Oh-ho, starting in on my mother? That's weak, for you, Evans, I've come to expect better—"

"Yeah, Mrs. Potter is a right lady, 'preciate it if you would leave her out of it, Lily," Sirius says off-handedly, lounging back on the couch with a newly regained casualness and watching them with far too much amusement.

Lily gives Sirius a disbelieving look as James' mouth shuts with a snap. He reaches for his glasses, perched very haphazardly at the brim of his nose, and pulls them off, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. "You know what," he says, through a yawn, "the two of you go back to that _personal _conversation. Sounded like it was about to go right well for you, Sirius…"

The ease straightaway slips out of Sirius' expression. He rubs at his jaw like it's sore, looking away, and Lily, for some reason, though her suspicions should have her in a white hot rage, loses all desire to press him for answers. She turns her gaze to Potter, who is posed as if he's going to leave any instant, though he isn't actually budging an inch. He looks as deflated as she suddenly feels.

She blows a sigh out through pursed lips, the loosed breath barely stirring her heavy hanging hair. "You came down here to say anything special, Potter?"

"Well I didn't know I was going to be having the pleasure of your company, and it's a bit late, or, er, early, for my usual dazzling spur-of-the-moment banter, but gimme a minute here—"

"I'm tired," Lily says. "Be less thick-skulled and say your piece to your _best-bloody-friend_, or I promise you, Potter, I will finally, finally throttle you."

"Think about that a lot, do you?" Sirius says, straightening off the couch in a rangy movement.

"Yes. And you'd be next," she says, reaching out with her wand to just tap Sirius' chest before he even noticed she'd drawn it. Looking amused, he takes one pointed step back, as far as his long legs will get him.

"Alright," James says to her, lifting his hands in front of his chest in surrender. He reaches one still higher, mauling his eye with it before turning vaguely in Sirius' direction. "Look, you prat. Come to bed already, will you?"

Sirius' eyebrows shoot up in amusement and Lily's come together in a crease. It takes James a minute before he starts vaguely waving his hands back and forth in swift dismissal. "That may have come out somewhat more interestingly than it was meant to. But you bloody well know what I mean. If you're going to be a ruddy coward about it, at least be intelligent about it and wait to turn in till we're all asleep instead of plunking your arse in the bleeding common room where anyone and McGonagall could come across you in your skivvies." James seems to realize at this point that Sirius is not, in fact, in his skivvies, but throws down his hands expansively as if indicating again they know what he means. He talks quite a lot with his hands, thinks Lily, and clamps down on the thought before it meanders into cordoned-off territory.

Sirius tilts his head, sending his hair flopping. His eyes crinkle so deeply in thought it mars his good looks. "I don't stay where I'm not welcome." He's clearly waiting for James to throw him a bone, admit forgiveness is only a matter of time.

James opens his mouth, but he sighs instead of offering some assuring of welcome and rubs fiercely at his bedhead hair, so mussed that his ministrations actually flatten it out some. Both boys looked tired and sad and far, far older than sixteen, thinks Lily, with a terribly familiar sense of awfulness and endings. Friendships could end, be crushed by a foul word or false-hearted deed, and no magic from the wand in her pocket could help. Even a best friendship— she'd learned that from Sev.

She crosses her arms and puts on her very best glower, or worst, for the receiving end. "Sirius Black," she says, unintentionally stamping her foot. "Or Badfoot or whatever idiot pet name it is you like your lot to call you— "

James somehow manages to choke on the air; she pauses to fix her eyes on him with malice before wheeling back to Sirius. "You listen to Potter and go to your room." There's that dangerous glint in the grey-blue eyes, the early glimmers of argument. "_Please_."

Sirius looks bewildered. "Are you actually telling me what to do? And…expecting me to listen?"

Lily frowns, wondering why she did assume he'd do as she bids when his current expression suggests that's increasingly unlikely. "Yes," she says slowly. "James is absolutely right, and you usually follow his lead anyhow, so you might as well when, this once, he's actually got a point. There's trying to be a rebel, and there's being contrary. One's stupider than the other."

"Who's_ trying_?" Sirius says, scandalized, as James, with a smirk that's more shocked than self-satisfied, echoes loudly, "I'm _absolutely_ right?"

There's a battering bang from behind one of the walls, where everyone knows the secret entryway from the Head of House's room is, at least since McGonagall came flying out of there like a banshee one night when an argument over a late-night chess match had turned into a full-fledged duel. "Oh, brilliant," Lily says, staring at the wall with horrified anticipation.

She is shushed by both boys. Sirius' hand is suddenly at her back, propelling her with ferocious speed towards James, himself halfway towards the entryway to the dorm.

Regaining her senses, she runs past the reach of his hand, brushing past James to the girls' stairs in her hurry not to be responsible for losing any House points. She registers, at the thought, that no points ever disappeared from the Gryffindor hourglass for whatever stunt has recently occurred, and wonders how they ever managed that. She glances back to see them rounding the boys' staircase two at a time, almost in sync, and thinks things may right themselves on their own, but James, with a bound, passes by Sirius. She stops, and her last glimpse of them is of Sirius' steps faltering behind, still following, but without the exuberance of a moment before.

A light hits her face. "Miss Evans?" comes McGonagall's voice, though Lily can't see past the blinding light hitting her face.

"Sorry, Professor," she says automatically, hand up to shield her eyes. She realizes, turned as she is to watch Sirius and James go, she could pass as coming down the stairs. She keeps her face placid and sweet. "I've been up studying, and thought I heard a noise…?"

The light dims as McGonagall tilts her wand, setting her own sharp features aglow. Her hair is in curlers, her expression bleary, but her eyes are sharp as candle flames in the dark. "And you were of course overeager to investigate for yourself."

Lily takes a breath, steels her nerves, and tries to be clever. "Well, satisfaction's supposed to bring the cat back, should curiosity kill it." Perhaps trying a little too hard, she reprimands herself.

McGonagall hums slightly in response, eyes on the boys' staircase as if Potter and Black were still clambering up it, and snapping back to Lily's face with a quiet curiosity of her own. "You may return to bed, Miss Evans."

Relief always makes her think of a chill drink crossing dry lips. She swallows. "Thank you, Professor."

"Oh Miss Evans?" McGonagall says, mildly, only once she's turned, and Lily tries to steady the rhythm of her breath as she pivots with a purposefully sleepy smile. "What subject has you up to all hours tonight? I should hope it isn't my class— I find that contrary to the persistent beliefs of many students, stronger work is achieved in daylight hours, when the mind is meant to be awake."

"I've been studying for Divination," Lily says. It isn't quite a lie. "I find it— challenging."

"Hmm. I would think a student of your caliber, Lily, would find Auriga's class little more than an amusing diversion."

"No," she says, without understanding why. It had been less of a joke, somehow, since Sirius switched into class. "That is— sometimes. It's a guessing game, in a way, looking for likely futures, but it's magic, too." She pauses under McGonagall's sharp look, inquisitive but not unkind, and, for some reason, feels compelled to keep talking. "It scares me a little. It makes me question if I'm in charge of my own life or not, when I like to think that I am."

McGonagall's eyes go soft, though it might be because of the increased shadows around them as she lowers her lit wand. "I quite understand, Lily," she says, and points up to the stairs. "Good night, now."

"You too, Professor," Lily says, giddy with the sense of escape as she heads up the stairs.

"And nicely done," says McGonagall quietly, so much so that Lily's not quite sure she's hearing right. She keeps climbing, afraid to look back and be snared again. "I have rather disliked seeing Sirius Black sleep on the sofa."


	3. the riddles and the rhymes

_A/N: So sorry for the LONG delay on this chapter. It'll get finished. Don't worry. Dedicated to my little sister for reminding me to keep writing this and to all the reviewers (two who messaged me in particular!) who keep encouraging me and looking forward to more. Thanks and I hope you enjoy!_

* * *

When Severus glances over at her at the end of Potions, hurt lurking behind his sneer, Lily doesn't look away. Not today. She stands with her books held to her chest like a lifejacket and stands waiting, meeting his eyes for once.

The flare of hope in them scorches her to the bone. She's not being kind, in speaking to him—not kind to him, not kind to herself. It's hard. She's thought time and again of a cutting comment that he would appreciate, a joke that might actually make him laugh or at least truly smile, an accomplishment or a story she wants to relay to him. No one's ever listened like he did, with an intensity that at times unnerved her even as it boosted her pride, like he was savoring her every word.

She'd thought all summer how easy it would be to go ring his bell, to open his letters of apology instead of returning them untouched. She could go back to borrowing the rare books in his attic and talking them over with him after—he'd long ago memorized them all—and fiddling with his mother's Potions equipment in the basement. She'd wanted to just go on a walk with him and laugh, a little guiltily, at his snarky and incisive comments about their classmates and neighbors or just people they'd pass in the park. This summer had been lonely, since she hadn't kept up with her primary school friends. Her one attempt to reconnect had been painful—she was a stranger to them, and strange, behind on music, television programmes, Muggle fashion and makeup, local happenings and local boys.

She waits until the dungeon classroom's entirely empty, with even Professor Slughorn off to his office. "I'm listening," she says, and shifts her weight to her right leg. Her foot starts tapping.

"Yes, I noticed," Severus says, eyes on her even as he makes one last notation in his Potions book. He manages to close it and place it very precisely in his satchel without diverting his gaze at all. "I knew that eventually it would get the better of you." His tone's snide, but his expression, for Sev, is almost cheerful.

"What, my curiosity?" Lily says, not about to play his game. "Oh, right, I've been maddened by your oblique and ever-so-sinister hints, which have succeeded in making me so suspicious I've come to fear for my own well-being around that hoodlum Black. How likely. Remember, I'm not the one of the two of us who's _utterly_ incapable of leaving well enough alone."

The black of Severus' eyes seems to expand, swallowing his irises. He finally looks away from her for a moment to shoulder his satchel. "Very well, then," he says silkily, "since it seems the truth does not appeal to you and I am, at any rate, committed to silence on the whole… incident—"

"Oh don't go all silly and dramatic on me," Lily says irritably. "You're bad enough with all that swooping you've started."

"Swooping?" he repeats, truly taken aback, which is always something of a victory when it comes to Severus.

She didn't mean to mention it, but of course she's noticed he's not simply trying to stay out of everyone's way anymore. He still goes around on cat feet, but angrily now, with extra swish to his robe when he stalks the hallway. "The way you've been walking this year—I can tell you've been practicing it."

It helps, too, that he's mostly grown into the robes his mother bought overlarge several years ago intending for them to last. He was bogged down in the black cloth before; he's in control of it now, even if the robes are still a little long. She'd approve of the new show of confidence if she thought it simply came with being an upper year, but it has the same undercurrent of nastiness, of threat, of the wrong sort of power that she spots in Mulciber, Rosier, half the Slytherin lot. There's a hint of gloating in it—more so since the end of September.

The blush that begins to stain his cheeks livens up his sallow features so much he looks like a completely different boy. "I'd almost think you've been keeping a close eye on me," Severus says, trying to sound lazy but too enthusiastic to quite manage it.

"I'm observant," Lily says. "Don't let it go to your head."

"And why is it you think that would go to my head?" he says instantly. "Already that accustomed to the preening of your latest… friends, are you?"

James, admittedly, does preen, but it's not like she's been hanging around with him. Sirius, who she supposes _might_ be a little justified in preening, is many things, but shockingly enough, vanity doesn't seem to be one of his sins. Or to interest him at all, actually.

She folds her arms across her chest rather than arguing the point of whether or not she's friends with Sirius Black.

"I suppose I've been giving you too much credit," Severus says after an awkward silence. "I assumed you could see the likes of Black for what they truly are—"

Even with her mouth closed, Lily can't hold back her low laugh. She knows what Mulciber and Avery, Severus' closest companions now, have been up to already this year, with mainly the first and second-year Muggle-borns and half-bloods as their targets. If she'd been made a prefect, she'd have shut them down. "Let's not do the whole pot/kettle thing, because your friends are heading much darker than my Black."

"You're up the wrong tree," Severus says, with a queer twist to his lips on 'tree'. Lily doesn't know what he might be hinting at, but it strikes her this is yet one more thing she's missed: for all that he's a Slytherin, Severus was raised in the Muggle world, with Muggle idioms, and their conversations never have the disconnect she runs into now and again with other Hogwarts classmates. "_Your _Black proved himself worse than any company _I_ keep not even a month ago. And for all your denials of curiosity, you wouldn't be speaking to me if you weren't wild to know what he's done."

"Nearly got you killed, I imagine," Lily says coolly.

Severus takes a step back in shock, and she's pleased by how she's surprised him, that she's puzzled it out. She's also horrified by the confirmation on his face.

"Black told you?" he says, aghast, and pain flares suddenly in his eyes. She almost forgets everything in the impulse to give her old friend a hug, but the expressionless shutter slides back into place just as quickly. He takes another step back, deliberately this time, and looks down his hooked nose at her. "Black fed you his sorry account of only meaning good fun and you let him off the hook as easily as that old fool Dumbledore. _You_." His hands twitch like he wants to grab her and shake her.

"No, you've told me more than Sirius has," Lily says. "I didn't know Dumbledore had been involved. But really, calling him 'homicidal' was the key—I've heard you call Sirius Black quite a few things over the years, but that was a new one on me. I don't suppose it was anything so simple as a duel, and I still can't work out how poor Remus Lupin got in the middle of it—"

Severus seems to forget about looking angry for the moment to look exasperated.

"—though it's quite obvious Potter had to end it."

"Of course," Severus says, between his teeth. "You're always hoping he'll turn out the hero, aren't you?"

She can't fathom how she's given him that idea. "It wouldn't be the first time he's dragged you back to the castle from following them, even though it meant detentions for himself—oh."

"Oh?" Severus demands. "What 'oh''?"

Lily doesn't know why she didn't see it before. She'd dismissed the idea of a duel, but she'd imagined Sirius staged some elaborate prank for Snape, or maybe even jumped him, when really it was _just the same as always_. The self-styled Marauders went off mysteriously to make trouble, and Severus snuck around trying to catch them and usually got himself in trouble in the process. And she pretended none of it went on or sometimes scolded, ineffectively, and sounding like a harpy, which she absolutely hated. "You caught them out at last at whatever-it-is. But only because Sirius let you."

"Oh yes," Severus says. "_Sirius _certainly did."

"For heaven's—" Lily catches herself starting to tut and stops. She's sixteen. It's not her job to mother these idiots. "Never mind," she says, gathering up her book bag and moving to go.

"That's it?" Severus says. "_Sirius Black tried to kill me_."

"Sirius Black's sense of humor scares me as much as the next sane person, but it sounds like he gave you exactly what you were asking for," Lily shoots back, shaking her head. She steps around him.

His hands hang slack at his side. "You don't even care."

She reaches the door before looking back. "I'm glad you're not hurt," she says. "But you're not. I'd have notice right away if you were even in the hospital wing. Actually—" She thinks about Sirius Black on the common room couch, about the seat left empty beside James Potter in their shared classes, "—Sirius seems to have come off the worst in this whole," she waves her hand, unable to think of an adequate word for the stupidity, "frippery between the lot of you."

Severus gapes. His mouth is still open when she walks off the door.

"You're easily fooled," he calls to her back.

She lets him have the last word. He can have his opinion. She makes up her own mind.

Also, she's quite late for Divination by now.

Sirius Black is sitting on the stairs of the North Tower when she gets there, instead of up in class already where he belongs. He lifts his head when he sees her and stands up languorously. "Interesting chat with Snivellus?" he asks.

She's unimpressed. Either he walked by the classroom or someone from Potions told him she'd hung behind. "Scintillating," she says tiredly, brushing by him and heading up the stairs.

She's relieved when he doesn't reply, even though he dogs her heels all the way up the stairs.

She prepares to mouth an apology to Professor Auriga, but when she opens the door, she finds only the class, murmuring quietly. Feeling thankful the teacher's late, she moves to the nearest empty table—but there isn't one. Only two empty chairs left at two of the small tables—one seat open across from Marlene McKinnon and one across from Felicia Fortescue. Marlene looks bored, shuffling the deck of tarot cards on her table, but Felicia is biting her lip hopefully and casting sheepish looks up through the fine fringe of hair falling over her eyes.

Drat. Lily'd forgotten all about the Felicia fiasco. Sirius Black seems to be more drama than usual when not under Potter's watch. She's thrown by the thought that Potter, who she's always taken to be the impulsive instigator, has actually been keeping Sirius in check all these years.

She looks over at Sirius, who's reached her side, half-expecting him to be frozen in indecision. But without a hitch in his step, he keeps striding—'right on past hopeful Felicia to sit across from Marlene, whose brief glance at Sirius is more cynically unsurprised than scornful.

Felicia looks like she's about to crumble all over again right in the middle of the classroom, faced with proof positive that Sirius doesn't genuinely want anything to do with her. Lily hesitates on her way to join her.

"Not seated yet, Miss Evans?" a voice says from behind her. Professor Auriga, who has just reentered the classroom, looks rather frazzled today, more bag lady than the molasses-cookie-making type of grandmother. She smells strongly of burnt herbs and gasoline.

"I was torn between my many options," Lily says, fake-smiling, before heading to the only empty chair.

"Hi, Fee," she says as she sits down. Felicia doesn't answer, blinking wetly.

"I apologize for my delay," Auriga says, adjusting her askew pointy hat. "I was—indisposed. Everyone keeping up with the homework should be more than adequately prepared to give a reading without use of books today. Please record your results and interpretations regarding the coming year on quill and parchment, as is tradition." No one in class moves, since Auriga usually spent the first half-hour in preparatory lecture, but she merely frowns. "Go on then," she says, taking a seat on the corner windowsill. "Begin!"

"Do you want to do my reading first or should I do yours?" Lily asks Felicia brightly. She's not sure about this whole no-book thing—is this a test? She's not exactly as prepared as she ought to be.

"I know you think I'm silly," Felicia says quietly. "It's only, he was my first real, real kiss, you know. Or maybe you don't. But he was. And I like him—oh, so, so very much. While he doesn't even want to sit with me. You, though… he waits outside of class for you. Everyone likes you."

Lily doesn't quite know what to say. "I suppose I'll do yours then," she says cautiously, shuffling the deck.

"I don't think you're that much prettier than me," Felicia says dolefully. Felicia is certainly wispily pretty, the way Lily envisions the doomed heroines of Victorian novels. "And you're always yelling at the boys. Is that what they like? I wouldn't suppose they would…"

Felicia is putting Lily in mind of her mom, who endlessly tells Lily to be less strident. She's tried for years to use her energy in more subtle ways, but sometimes she stalks around and finds herself shrieking like Petunia, mostly at Potter—and yet, he keeps asking her out anyways. Lily sets the shuffled deck down. "I think you cut the deck for the first time now."

"You haven't picked a signifier," Felicia points out, sighing. Lily can tell this is going to be a very long class already.

"Don't get funny with me." Marlene's voice carries over from the other table, raised and very unfunny. Lily's surprised—Marlene's tolerance of Sirius is usually pretty high and probably directly correlated with her thinking he's pretty. Looking at Felicia, who's now blatantly watching Marlene and Sirius over Lily's shoulder, Lily figures Marlene must be angrier on her friend's behalf than Lily assumed.

"I'm not trying to be funny," Sirius says lowly, as if trying to get Marlene to lower her own voice by example.

Her reply is, in fact lower, so much so Lily can only make out the tight tone. Lily starts shuffling through the cards and grasps at the Queen of Cups, whose blonde hair puts her in mind of Felicia. Probably not the appropriate method of choosing, but she simply wants this over with.

She slides the deck back over to Felicia, who silently cuts them, and passes them back to be shuffled again. They go back and forth a few times and then Lily begins laying out the cards—the cloaked Death card turns up almost immediately in the position she thinks is associated with events to come, but of course, Death in Tarot does not actually mean _death_. She still doesn't like the card. Felicia, luckily, doesn't even seem to notice.

The sudden crash shakes the floor so violently that Lily's chair vibrates. Her fingers fumble and she drops the cards, turning to look over her shoulder. Of course it's Sirius Black and his chair sprawled on the floor—he always tips his seat back too far—but that isn't what's sent him tumbling this time around. The table is upturned too. Marlene McKinnon is on her feet and breathing harshly, wand in hand, and Sirius looks truly alarmed.

"I swear," he says from the floor, more fervent than Lily's seen him in days, "Mack, I didn't, I wouldn't-"

"Do we have a problem here?" Auriga asks, rising to move across the room.

"Nah," Marlene says, lowering her wand only to reach for her books. "I'm dreadfully clumsy, is all." Her face, gone slack and emotionless, chills Lily. She's never seen expressive Marlene look so deadened or sound so phony. "And oh my flaming stars, I'm so embarrassed I'm going to have to run off and weep my precious eyes out." Her eyes don't look remotely teary or red, merely flat.

"Look, I _wouldn't_," Sirius is insisting, propping himself up on his elbows and not even trying yet to disentangle his legs from the table atop them.

"Wouldn't what, Mr. Black?" Auriga says sharply, then, "Miss McKinnon!"

But Marlene already has a foot out the door. "Ta," she says breezily, waggling her fingers.

Evan Rosier chortles from the corner and is hushed by Charity Burbage.

Auriga seems frozen, a long-suffering expression on her face. Then she turns on her heel to stare down at Sirius. "Mr. Black," she intones. "Kindly explain which of your various charms have sent a heretofore well-behaved young lady—" –not quite how Lily would describe Marlene, but admittedly, she's never seen the other girl act disrespectfully in class—"—fleeing my classroom."

"Professor," Sirius says. Lily wishes he would stand up already. He's looking only at Auriga and doesn't seem conscious to the eyes of the entire class upon him. But she's begun suspecting lately he's not so much oblivious, as she's always thought, as he is brilliant at making everyone think he could care less.

"Now, please," Auriga says, her gentle voice as sharp as Lily's ever heard it.

Sirius slowly knees aside the table and chair. Getting up, he sets them upright before very deliberately picks up the cards, one by one, before rising to his feet. He hands them to Auriga, wordlessly.

She grabs them impatiently, scrutinizing his face. "I'm waiting."

"Look at the cards, Professor," Sirius says quietly.

Auriga flicks her eyes downward quickly and her posture goes instantly limp. She shuffles through the pile, with increasing speed, then sets the cards down as if eager to rid her hands of them. When she looks up again, her scolding expression has turned granite-hard. "In the hall, Mr. Black," she says, stalking out.

Sirius looks up at the ceiling as he walks toward her, but right before he exits, he glances back, his eyes dark and hooded, with just the faintest shake of his head.

"Mmm," Felicia says by way of comment, a small, sad sound Lily can't make any sense of. But she doesn't turn to face her or ask what she means by it. Lily's staring at the facedown cards on the table. So is everyone else in the room.

"Who's going to have a look then?" Davy Gudgeon says, without even a beat passing. He's already half out of his seat. "Oh come along, you know you're all dying to!"

"I'm all a quiver," Evan Rosier drawls from opposite Davy. Severus has always thought quite a lot of Rosier. Lily doesn't know him well, except that he disapproved of Sev's friendship with her and she's never stumbled across him bullying a younger or Muggle-born student. She's not naïve enough anymore to think that means Rosier doesn't partake in such meanness—he might, like certain people she knows, just be sneakier about it.

"As if you're not curious," Charity Burbage says, getting up herself.

"Why would I care what Black and his girlfriend are roaring about?" Evan says, putting his arms on the table and laying his head down, apparently planning to nap.

"Go on, Davy," Grace Hornby says, "you'll end up doing it anyway, might as well get it over soon like so they don't catch you in the act!"

"She's not his girlfriend," Felicia says, belatedly.

Davy inches forward, now completely off his chair. "Should I?" he asks, waiting for urging. Grace Hornby shoos him with her hands and he scampers toward the upside-down table, at once. Everyone except Evan Rosier stands at the seat to better see the table.

Lily walks over toward it herself, in time to see Davy flip the card at the top of the deck.

A cross-eyed man hangs upside down, one knee bent over the other to form a four with his legs. He might be alive, since his eyes are open but blank; he might not be, since he's hanging from a gallows branch. Davy draws in a breath, stepping back. Lily isn't sure why—the Hanged Man card might not look pleasant, but she remembers it's not necessarily bad. It might signal suspension and selflessness, though it is associated with sacrifice, sometimes martyrdom. When Davy shows no signs of turning over the next card, she reaches out and flips it for him. The same card turns up. She picks up the deck and shuffles through it quickly before putting it back together, Davy moving to glance over her shoulder. All the Hanged Man. She doesn't get it. Probably an easy enough transfiguration spell, though these decks have supposedly been in use for several centuries and might be resistant to change, magic as they already are.

"That's low," Davy says, whistling. "Even for a Black—that's low."

Evan has been trying desperately not to pay attention, staring at the window as if contemplating throwing himself out it. But even he stands up at last, looking annoyed with himself as he gets up to see what the fuss is about.

Charity is whispering urgently at Grace, something about "rotten," and Felicia says, "Oh, no," in a swooning sort of voice.

Lily looks around. "Clearly, I'm missing something," she says. She'd skimmed the reading a bit quickly, granted, but she hadn't gotten the sense the Hanged Man was some great boogeyman like the Grim to set everyone skittering.

Davy starts and Grace stares. "Surely, you must," Grace says, before trailing off, confused. "Everyone in the wizarding world must—"

"You forget," Evan says, so dryly he actually sounds raspy, "Evans isn't properly of the wizarding world, is she now?"

"Don't you start that," Charity says in a surprisingly sharp voice. "But—Lily—you do live with her…?"

It hits Lily like a slamming door. It isn't about the card meaning at all or about being on the outside of the magical world; it's about Marlene, who she's lived with for six years and whose private world she still knows precious little about.

"She doesn't even talk about it with me," Felicia tells Lily, in a voice that is apparently meant to be reassuring.

"He didn't hang himself, of course, so Black's handiwork is a bit…imaginative," Evan says. "It certainly got his jab across, though. You really didn't know?"

"Hey, Slytherin," Davy says. "Shut it."

"Marlene's… father?" Lily had gathered some years ago Marlene's dad wasn't in the picture. Her mom, her brothers and sisters, various aunts and uncles and cousins, including one set they seemed to live with, all came up in conversation, and while a gentleman about the right age usually picked Marlene up at Platform 9 ¾, Lily had eventually understood him to be an uncle. She'd never dreamed of asking about Marlene's home situation, and the other girl had never offered.

"Took his own life," Charity says gently. "More or less."

"The coward," Evan says, with surprising passion. When he realizes they're all staring, he actually flushes red and mutters, "It's no decent way to go."

"Low," Davy repeats, "of Black. I hope Auriga sends him to the headmaster. No, I hope she sends him to _McGonagall_—_much_ more frightening."

Sirius Black chooses that moment to walk back into the room. He takes in their expressions very quickly, never even looking at Lily this time. "Auriga's gone off somewhere," he says idly. "Says we're dismissed."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Grace Hornby starts, raising her voice, but Sirius just grins rather madly and saunters out the door.

Davy Gudgeon calls a few choice words after them.

Lily finds she's still holding the changed tarot cards. She slips them into her bag, thinking, most especially of Sirius' glance at her before Auriga pulled him into the hall.

Lily would never call Sirius innocent. But he's not cruel. She doesn't think he did this.

She likes him too much to believe it.


	4. going nowhere fast

A/N: I know, I know ~ I'm in grad school, I'm (supposed to be) working on my massive thesis constantly... but tonight I finished this instead. Don't abandon hope! All stories will get finished eventually! _Happy New Year, friends_, and this one goes out to all the reviewers who _ever_ sent a message asking about updates, found the story ages after the last update and still followed in the hope one would someday come, or left a long thoughtful review *any time* but especially in the past two years. If I had the time, I would have loved to reply, but where I did have the time, I figured you'd want it put toward finishing the story rather than sending thanks. Still, never think a review went unnoticed or unnappreciated; I get them on my phone, and there have been days where the surprise arrival of a review is the very best part of my day. So, much belatedly: THANKS THANKS THANKS.

* * *

The tarot cards Lily took are burning a hole in her school bag.

In fact, her bag's starting to smoke, drawing more stares than she's comfortable with. She picks up her clipped walk to Gryffindor Tower to a jog as she reaches the stairs.

She doesn't pay any attention to who she's passing on her way up, but someone taps her shoulder, so lightly and briefly she almost thinks she imagined it. She keeps moving.

"Lily," Remus Lupin calls after her, slowly, "you might already be aware of this, but—"

She glances back, finding Remus just behind her, stopped against the bannister. "Yes, Remus, my bag's smoking," she says, still hustling up the stairs. "Thanks ever so."

"Well, that," he says. "But also, it's on fire."

With visions of her robes and hair going up in flames, Lily drops her bag instinctively. It hits the stair, flames licking through a new hole in its leather. She goes for her wand, but Remus already has his in hand.

"_Synguere_," he says sharply, and the fire shrivels to tendrils of smoke.

Lily's plan had been to soak her bag with water. "Quite nice, that," she says, feeling guilty for being snappish with Remus. "What was it?"

"Snuffing Spell," he says, frowning. "Who was trying to set you on fire?"

"No one," she says. She reaches for her bag strap.

"You've got no reason to protect him," Remus says in a very taut voice. Lily's never heard him speak in quite that tone before.

"Sirius?" she asks.

Remus' shoulders straighten very suddenly, and Lily is suddenly aware how tall Remus is. She tends to think of him as smaller than Sirius and James, but it's just that he always folds in on himself, even near his friends. "I meant Snape," he says. "If you're saying that _Sirius_ did that—"

"Sirius wouldn't," Lily says, mentally adding, _to me_. She finds herself suddenly contemplating whose bags Sirius would think it very funny to set on fire. It's discomforting how long a list she can come up with immediately.

"You'd be surprised by what Sirius is capable of," Remus says darkly, and Lily's struck by the thought. Remus would have a much better sense than her of what sort of pranks Sirius would or wouldn't pull.

Her bag chooses that moment to ignite again.

A Ravenclaw boy Lily doesn't know leans over as he passes. "What've you got in there?" he asks, curiously. She ignores him, going for her wand.

Remus' raised eyebrow seems to be asking the same question. He flicks his wand again, but the fire fails to snuff this time.

"_Aguamenti_," Lily hisses, and the blast of water shrivels the flame but creates a puffing cloud of black smoke. Half the students on the stairwell glance over at her, but most remain unconcerned; magical mishaps happen every day at Hogwarts.

Lily readjusts her bag so the smoking side faces away from her. She takes a hold of Remus' arm. "Come with me," she says.

"Ah, Lily, I was heading to class—"

"I'm borrowing you," she says, but then she realizes she's already half-dragging him. Too strident again. She quickly lets go of his now-even-more-rumpled robe sleeve. She looks pointedly at her bag, fire again outlining where the tarot cards rest against the leather, then back at Remus. "If you don't mind, that is."

He gives her this look. It's a very familiar Remus expression, bemused exasperation and something else, but she's not sure she's ever been on the receiving end of it before and can't place exactly when she's seen it. "I can loan you an hour or two," he says.

He falls in stride with her as they dash up the stairs, and it makes Lily feel strange, realizing she was walking this way with Sirius Black only a few hours before. Both James Potter's friends, both boys she's spent very little one-on-one time with in all their years of school together, and what's making her feel funny isn't how unfamiliar it feels but quite the opposite. As if it had always been this way.

Déjà vu, she thinks, and shivers, despite the heat rising from her bag.

* * *

In Gryffindor Tower the common room is full of first years struggling with their first major essay and a whole crowd clustered around an intensive game of Gobstones.

"I suppose we should try my room," Lily says. She keeps a steady stream of water on her bag, hardly smoking now but rather obviously dripping.

"You're forgetting," Remus says, "the girls' dormitories are spelled to keep boys out."

"Oh," says Lily, who did not ever know that to forget it. She flushes, very glad at that moment she's speaking to Remus and not someone more teasing.

"You can get into ours, though," Remus says. "And the others will be in Care of Magical Creatures—where I ought to be."

"Except for Sirius." Lily's fairly sure Sirius was banned by Professor Kettleburn from Care of Magical Creatures for a fire crab incident back in fourth year.

"He hasn't been spending his free time around the dorm lately."

"I'd noticed," Lily says. Dodging the Gobstones crowd, she follows Remus up the boy's staircase. Entering, she realizes that, like the girls' dorm, it's all beds and trunks, no chairs. Ignoring the impulse to look around and identify whose bed was whose (the unmade one _must_ be Potter's), Lily upends her bag onto the carpet, then shakes her hands out from the heat. Her books and piles of scrolls come tumbling, some blackened by smoke but none actually burned—whatever spell it is must not work that way, and luckily enough, or it would have been the end of her Potions notes and half-finished Charms essay. Last the tarot deck spreads out across the floor, and the individual cards start smoldering into the carpet. Lily sits down cross-legged beside them and reaches experimentally to touch one. At a few inches away the heat makes her jerk her hand back.

"You stole those," Remus says intently. He crouches down for a closer look.

He's right, but Lily feels absurdly miffed. "It could very well be my own deck."

"It could," Remus says agreeably. "Though that would mean you've somehow triggered your own anti-theft hex. You could've simply told me."

"In the middle of the stairwell?"

But Remus isn't listening; he's muttering something and waving his wand, and suddenly the cards are no longer destroying the carpet. He grins very boyishly, actually looking sixteen for once. "There's much stronger hexes on some of the library books," he says to Lily's open mouth, and before she can ask, hurriedly adds, "James went through a phase where he nicked things."

"Not so surprising."

"Not so unpredictable as you nicking something, anyway." Remus, still smiling, taps one of the tarot cards, testing, before sweeping them into a pile. He moves into a cross-legged position himself, directly across from Lily, and shuffles the cards, deftly. "You couldn't wait till this weekend to buy a set of your own in Hogsmeade?"

"There's something wrong with them. See for yourself."

Remus, idly, flips one over, and then flips it back so quickly Lily doesn't even have time to see its face. He peeks under the next one in the stack, without turning it over, repeating the motion for the next few.

"Is there something especially disturbing about the Hanged Man I don't understand?" Lily asks, watching Remus' face change. "Besides the connection to Marlene's father?"

"Sorry?" No trace of his smile remains.

Lily feels a gust of relief. "I'm not the only one who didn't know, then?" She lowers her voice even though there's no one there, growing more urgent at Remus' studiously blank expression. "That he—that it seems he killed himself?"

"Lily," says Remus. "I think you'd better explain what happened. But Marlene's father isn't actually dead."

"But I only just—everyone in Divination told me—"

"You're very good at Potions," Remus says. "You've heard of the Draught of Living Death."

The sleeping potion. She's even brewed it. Lily nods briskly.

"Some drafts are stronger than others," Remus says. "The Ministry uses it, ah, _humanely_, in cases where… people… are a danger to others, or themselves, but haven't warranted the punishment of prison or death. They give them dreamless sleep."

Lily wonders if Marlene's father might have been dangerous, and how that could tie with suicide. "But there's an antidote for the Draught. More than one, even."

"A potion's as good as its maker," Remus says. "As strange and as specific as its ingredients, too. The Ministry possesses the only variance of Wiggenweld Potion strong enough to wake the people they put to sleep. And even that failed to wake up Mr. McKinnon. It's… mildly infamous." He coughed, more a polite punctuation than a racking one. "I suppose you wouldn't have heard of McKinnon Manufacturers? Dublin-based, but they used to supply shops on Diagon. I remember the bottles, when I was little—my mother used to buy this sort of, ah, cough syrup. I believe they went rather badly out of business and then…" He glances down at the deck. "Well, I can see how the reoccurrence of the Hanged Man could set off Marlene."

Lily's mind whirrs. A Draught of Living Death that truly lived up to its name, something that made life stop without inducing actual death. She remembers Evan Rosier's outburst labeling Marlene's father a coward. "Does everyone know this much about it?" she asks slowly.

Remus shifts. "I suppose. I can't say I know much about Marlene's present family situation, but there's a certain amount of—accumulated knowledge, yes."

"I meant this much about the Draught," Lily says, thoughts clicking together. "Like you said, I know my Potions," or really, Severus had, but Lily doesn't have time for that thought, "and I'd never heard of any of that. About how the Ministry uses it."

"My father worked for the Ministry, once," Remus says, too lightly. He sets the deck down, carefully, busying himself in making it a loose pile. "Accumulated knowledge, as we were saying."

Lily splays her hands on the rug, staring at them. She feels an impulse to take his hand, but despite all these years of school, she doesn't know him well enough for that to seem comfortable, or right. "Remus, when you said 'people,' did you…I couldn't help but picture—"

"I meant people." His expression twists.

"Okay," Lily says, trying to show she'll let it drop. She reaches for one of the tarot cards, but Remus' hands are suddenly, busily, in the way, restacking the cards.

"You did ask me to take a look," he says, pulling his wand to point at the cards. "Let me try a few things."

And Lily thinks she ought to let her sudden thought go, she ought to draw her hand back and embrace a change in topic, ought to stay away from anything that makes Remus' nice face twist to such a harsh expression, but she can't help from barging on. She darts her hand forward and flips up a card.

It's the Moon.

Remus drops his wand and pulls back his hand. Lily turns the loose pile over and more Moon cards slide free. They're all the Moon.

She looks to Remus, wonderingly, and he scrambles to his feet, managing to be amazingly stiff despite the hurry of his motion.

Now_ would_ be the moment to reassuringly take his hand, Lily figures, but he's hustled out of her reach. She knows she ought to say something, but all she can think, on repeat, is the less-than-brilliant _Oh, Remus_, which she's afraid could come off very pitying and apologetic or even afraid, everything she does not want to sound at this moment. "Did Sirius do this?" she asks.

"What?" Remus says, at a short clip. Then aghast, "Are you suggesting—he isn't—how much do you—"

"The cards, Remus. The ones that don't work quite right and maybe have a bit of a mean streak in what they show." If she could raise one eyebrow, Lily would do it now. She settles for lifting both at him.

Remus sits back down, though it's more of a collapse to the floor.

"I don't think he did," Lily says. "But Professor Auriga was very upset. And she dealt with Sirius putting Pepper-Up Potion in her molasses cookies in third year—I'm still not sure how he did that—and all of the idiot predictions James would spout in class, with hardly a blink. Today she pulled Sirius into the hall and ended class." Lily narrows her eyes at Remus, who's looking green. "Are you going to be sick?"

"Are we going to simply ignore the elephant in the room?" he counters.

"Why, Remus," Lily says, finally letting some of her shock into her voice, "I really didn't have the faintest idea you turned into an elephant."

He stares at her.

"I realize that's not the cleverest line in the world, but it's all I've got at the moment," Lily apologizes.

The room is very silent for a very long minute, and Remus looks away. "You've known for a while, then," he says at last. "_Severus_ told you?"

"No!" Lily says, but then she thinks about it. "Though I can't say he didn't try. He—he's had an inkling for a long, long time, since we… oh, since we first studied werewolves, I suppose. But I never listened."

Remus studies his palms intently, flexing his hands with a tautness that looks painful. "I understand," he says. "You didn't want to believe it."

"Well, of course not." Lily's study of the werewolf unit is coming back to her, with facts she finds it almost unbearable to match to the soft-eyed boy she knows. Torturous transformations. Shortened lives. Limited futures. She feels suddenly guilty for all the times she's complained about homework in front of Remus. "I don't like to think how much harder it must make things for you." That's a hideous understatement, she's sure.

Remus lets his hands fall slack. "Most people would worry about a wolf so close to their door."

Lily would like to argue that, but compared to Remus', whatever grounds she might have for an upbeat idea of 'most people' seem weak. "Well—never the right people."

Remus meets her gaze again. His eyes are so sad it takes Lily a moment to realize he's smiling at her. "You sound like James," he says.

Lily busies herself with picking up the cards. "Now, these stayed the same when we looked at them earlier… but you were shuffling the deck, and Marlene likely was, too… Only one way to test that." Lily pauses with the cards in her hands, considering what may come if she shuffles.

Remus shakes his head, his hair flopping. He keeps looking at his open hands, flat on the floor. "What are you looking to find out?" he says at last, on a sigh. "What you said about Sirius—is that why you wanted my help, to see if he could have done this? Classroom cards are usually dosed with old magic, so, magically, no doubt they're difficult to mess with."

"He could do it, though," Lily says. She meant it to sound more like a question.

"If he put his mind to it? Probably," Remus says. "But I guarantee he didn't."

"You don't think he would?"

"I've learned not to put anything past him," Remus says, reverting to his most unreadable tone. "But this is subtle, and Sirius is not."

"No, he's much more of an elephant than you are," Lily says. She's appalled when she realizes she actually just said that; it was a stupid thought and a ridiculous comment. She's starting to apologize when Remus throws back his head and laughs.

For some reason Lily has always thought of Remus' laugh as silent—certainly it's the only way she's seen him laugh before, soundless and shoulders shaking at his friends' antics, or covered up with a cough in front of professor—but it's a richly warm, room-filling sound. She's not sure what it is: some combination of his laugh's contagion and this whole ridiculous situation, that possibly the nicest boy she knows actually is in danger of eating people once a month, that this, as with Marlene, is a story going on that she's missed completely over six years in the same Tower, that she's still trying to process how "You sound like James" could possibly feel like one of the highest praises she's ever been given. But something sets her off, too.

And so, Lily's laughing hysterically on the floor of the boys' dorm with Remus Lupin when James Potter walks in, bleeding profusely from his forehead.

"What's all this?" he demands. Peter is on his heels, dancing anxiously around him with a bloody towel, but he, too, stops in his tracks at finding Remus and Lily. Remus clambers to his feet.

"What's all that?" Lily replies, getting control of herself. She finds she actually needs to wipe her eyes.

"The natural hazards of Magical Creatures class," James says, blinking dazedly. He seems to be having some difficulty processing Lily and the cards on the floor, possibly because of the blood on his glasses.

Remus looks to Peter.

"Horn graze," Peter says. He winces as he gestures to the side of his own head.

"Not another incident with the unicorns, James," Remus says. His lips are sneaking back upward.

"He's really bleeding," Lily says. She stands up to get a better look. "You dolt, why didn't you go right to the hospital wing?"

"Quidditch, Evans," James says, still frowning at her. "Peter, towel."

"No, there's no Quidditch," Lily says, frowning back as Peter rushes to hand James the towel to press against his head.

"A Congealing Charm to the head, Pomfrey will at least insist on an overnight stay, possibly ban James from the first match this weekend," Remus explains.

"Why hasn't anyone done one already?" Lily asks, exasperated.

"Kettleburn sent him to Pomfrey and James can't really do one on himself," Peter says, then he looks down and lowers his voice. "And, er, we thought it best I didn't try, especially with Remus right here, and with you—"

"You had no way of knowing Remus and I were here," Lily says. "Meanwhile, blood loss!"

Peter's eyes widen. "Right, of course we didn't know you and Remus were here, lucky—"

"Blood loss is still happening, remember," Remus says, nodding toward James, who, as if on cue, sits down on the floor very suddenly. "Should I patch him up, Lily, or will you take the dubious honors? You'll manage it better."

"Fine," she snaps, because James Potter bleeding all over the carpet and the cards is more distressing then she would have expected. "All right, ah—James, if you'd hold still a minute—"

"Your voice just went all wobbly," he says, looking up from The Moon cards he's poking at. Astonishingly enough, he sounds appalled. "And you're calling me James."

Lily draws her wand. "Well, you're bleeding," she says. And possibly his head's even more damaged than it appears, since he'd usually be eating that sort of thing up, from her.

James, with some of the wobbling of which he spoke, stands back up. "If you don't like me, _bleeding shouldn't change that_."

"Unless she does like you," Peter puts in helpfully.

"Not helping, Wormtail," James snarls, in chorus with Lily's "It's not about liking you, it's about being nice!"

"Nice, nice, nice," James says. "I've heard you throw around that word a lot, Evans, to all sorts—be _nice_ to the Slytherins practicing Dark Arts, Sev's _nice_ if you know him, Mary Macdonald's _nice_—and half the time, it's really about pity and feeling better about yourself. Half the time, I think some of your trouble with Snape is that he stopped being this shabby little urchin you reckoned you took care of and started being the scary swooping git _I _always knew—"

"I think I've changed my mind about fixing you up," Lily says, as flatly as she can. (James, apparently, has also noted Sev's swooping.)

"It's a surface wound," James says, stepping closer, "we can handle it fine, I'm fine—"

He pauses for breath, and Peter adds, "They _were_ only little unicorns."

James gives Peter a look of despair. "Never mind the bleeding, I don't need taking care of, or _mothering_, and you know what I think about that?"

Lily bends and swoops up the cards. "No, and I'll see myself out rather than hear—"

"I've got a mess of your cards here," James says, holding out his fist, and sure enough, he does, "I think you like running the show—"

"Pot! Kettle! Black!" Lily says, rapid-fire, straightening again and rising to her toes.

"You need to be superior-"

"Says the most arrogant—!"

"You don't have a single friend you stand on equal footing with!" James bellows, and Lily falls silent.

But only for a moment. "And your friendships with Remus and Sirius and Peter—that's equal footing? I've heard you tell them what to do—"

"Er, to be fair," Remus interjects, from behind, while James and Lily seethe at each other, "that's more James' _manner _than anything, it's more equal than it might—"

"So equal that Sirius Black follows you around like he's your dog?"

Peter and Remus seem to come down with a simultaneous fit of coughing, but James simply folds his arms. The bloody towel he's been holding against his head falls to the ground. "Sirius is his own man, and even if I _had_ any real control over what he does, more equal him choosing to follow than you taking in strays—"

"And instead you want me to what, put up with you following me like you're in heat?" Lily wishes, immediately after speaking, she had not stuck with the dog comparison.

James doesn't blink. "Girls, then. You're only close with the ones who need looking out for—Mary Macdonald, Greta Catchlove—"

"I don't have any true friends, not like _yours_, that's what you're saying? Exactly what every girl wants to hear, I'm swooning, I'll go with you to Hogsmeade this weekend after all—"

"I haven't asked you to Hogsmeade," James says impatiently, rocking back again, adding, "this weekend," and he swoops his hand dismissively, "my point, my point, is I don't want you doing your—your _nice_, to _my friends_, because while it would be all right if you were actually our mate, the feeling sorry for them, playing at Sirius being your new Snivellus—"

"That is absolutely not at all—"

"Because we're all in it together, you know," James says, "the four of us, so if you've a problem with me, it comes back to all of us, except, 'cept, you've never been so hard on the others, because Peter's—" James casts a glance at Peter and hesitates, "well, Peter, and Remus is… rumpled, and only now that you're seeing Sirius as _lonely _and_ mistreated_—"

Lily's hands are shaking. "If this is _jealousy_, James Potter, you have _no_ right—"

"Loneliness is not a reason to like someone, anymore than—" James stumbles, so suddenly Lily leaps back in alarm.

Remus and Peter are by his side bolstering him immediately, James already waving them off in annoyance, but Lily has realized, belatedly, James hasn't been rocking on his heels so much as _swaying_. She has her wand out and does the Congealing Charm immediately, sealing the wound to an ugly, crusty blot along his hairline.

He raises his hand to it and turns back to her when his hand comes away clean. "Weakness," he says, in a tone suggesting the stumble had been an illustration of his point and not the near-collapse it was, "and suddenly you need to help after all."

"Because one of us should have done it ten minutes ago," she says. "It's called humanity, Potter, try it." She holds out her hand. "Give me the rest of those cards back." James moves to hand them over, and she grabs the opposite end. He doesn't let go right away. "For the record," Lily says, becoming increasingly piqued, "your friends are actually enjoyable company, when not in yours. At your _best_, you're exasperating."

"You don't know anything about my best," James says, letting go of his end of the cards. "Or Sirius' worst—"

Lily is so tired of cryptic hinting—and lectures from _boys_ on how they think she should behave and who she should be spending time with. Lily shakes out her hair and lowers her voice. "Remus is a werewolf, Snape's been following you for years nearly making trouble, and Sirius did something stupid—no, something bad, that very nearly put the two together. Yes, surprise," she says, when James and Peter reel, "I oh-so-cleverly put together the anvil-sized clues you've all been dropping…"

"Well?" says Remus, quietly, when she doesn't continue.

"Well what?" Lily asks.

"You've picked up the gist of it, what now? You wanted to prove Sirius innocent of a cruel trick with cards for whatever reason, all right—"

"What's that about the cards?" James asks sharply. His gaze zeroes onto them.

"This was intentional," Remus says. "Severus could have died. At my hands."

Lily feels the weight of that and doesn't know how to answer, until she sees James' pained expression. "Does anyone in this room think Sirius actually meant him to die?" she asks, just as quietly as Remus. "Or… get bitten?"

"I somehow don't think he wanted Snape around on full moons," James mutters, in Remus' direction. Rubbing at his head, he heads over to the unmade bed, giving Lily wide berth, and pulls a small case out from underneath. Lily recognizes the distinct smell of Pepper-Up as he pops it open, and the unmistakable magenta color of Blood Replenishing Potion from the bottle he pulls out. That suggests a disturbing level of preparation to take care of injuries.

"I told you what happens," Remus says, his voice dropping even lower, smooth in a way that is very false coming from him and very dangerous, "to… people the Ministry finds too dangerous. I told you today what might have happened to me."

Lily blanches. She's never considered the Draught of Living Death a significant potion, till now.

"And so do you think I should still be _nice_ to Sirius Black, Lily? Do you think _you_ should?" Remus pauses, before adding the final touch. "If I remember correctly, you ended a friendship over a single word. And this is somewhat more than a word."

James shuts the potions case with a bang, mouth tight. He sits down against the bed and starts cleaning the drips of blood off his glasses with his sleeve.

Remus clear his throat in the resounding silence. "I expect Snape said he hadn't meant it, too."

"It wasn't the word," Lily says, after another moment. "It was the thought." Of course Snape hadn't meant to say it; but to say 'Mudblood' meant he thought it, used it with his friends, about others if not about her, a truth revealed by anger and embarrassment. A truth she'd been ignoring to try to keep a friend. "Hang what I think, but what Sirius was thinking—or wasn't thinking—that would matter to me. That _does_ matter to me, though forgiving him isn't _my _battle—and, as much as I like you, Remus, I'm not going to pretend he doesn't exist on your behalf, either. For one, Sirius makes that very difficult."

"I like how she says 'hang what I think' and then tells you exactly what she thinks," says James, without looking up from his glasses. "Rather like how she says she's leaving and then—"

Lily readjusts her grip on the deck, grabs up her slightly-charred bag, and walks out. "I reserve the right to be a contradiction," she tosses over her shoulder at him, ignoring the rest of whatever he's saying.

"Lily," a voice comes immediately after her.

It's Remus, so for the second time today she finds herself turning to him on a staircase. He's grabbed up some of the books and scrolls she'd dumped earlier and holds them out to her.

"James talks a lot of rubbish sometimes," he says. "Don't let it get to you."

"Of course not," Lily lies.

Remus hesitates, as she takes the books back. "I'm not entirely sure how you got involved in all this," he says warily. "What you hoped to find out or what you'll do now you… know."

"I don't really know myself," Lily says, a little staggered by that knowledge. "Originally I wanted to be left alone in Divination."

"'Originally' means that's not true anymore."

"Oh, Remus," Lily says, not able to help herself this time. "I know, I'm a silly girl trying to fix things that are none of my business, and I'm terrible at forgiving people myself, and I don't like James Potter, at all, but it's going to be a disaster at Christmas if you make James choose between staying on your side, even though you _are_ in the right, or taking Sirius, who _moved in with him_, home for Christmas."

"Learned about that, too, did you?" Remus says. Even more so than usual, he looks like the oldest sixteen-year-old Lily's ever seen when he looks down and says, "James is my best friend."

He leaves the rest unspoken, but Lily can hear it anyway: _but Remus isn't James'_.

And then, suddenly, Remus laughs, not an ironic laugh but one of genuine, pleasant surprise. It's so unexpected Lily turns around half-anticipating Sirius Black to be behind her speak-of-the-devil style, but he isn't.

"Those have changed some since you were grappling over them with James," Remus says, pointing at the cards in her hands.

"Hardly grappling," Lily says, and looks. She does not laugh. "The card represents a choice between two paths, Remus Lupin, it is not what it looks like, I'm in N.E.W.T Divination, I know these things, and don't even—"

But he's already reopened the door to the sixth year boys' dormitory and heading back in again, still looking amused.

Lily stays on the stairs only long enough to reassemble her bag. She rushes back down into the common room, briefly attracting the idle interest of students studying and what remains of the crowd from the Gobstones match.

When she glances again at the cards—two figures standing in front of two winding paths—her pique and discomfort wins over better judgment and even curiosity. She tosses the entire deck into the common room fire, staying just long enough to see over seventy copies of The Lovers card start to burn.


	5. no halo at all

_A/N: (I'm alive! Further details on my profile). Gosh, a long time ago this was supposed to be a simple, quickly-written story... that didn't happen. But here it is finally moving towards where it was always intended to go (next chapter, a little less conversation, a little more action). (An in-fic sort of "previously on" provided ;D)_

* * *

Saturday marks the first Hogsmeade trip_ and_ the first Quidditch match of the year. They've never fallen on the same date in all of Lily's years at school. Students have speculated about the possibility before, swapped stories of it happening in a parent or sibling's year—but no one ever thought it really would.

Lily can't get to sleep the night before. Not because she cares about the trip or the match. Not because Remus is a werewolf and Marlene's father ended his own life, and she's seen them day in and out for _years_ oblivious to the hard truths they lived with. Not because the whole reason Sirius Black switched into Divination and became her class partner is that he nearly got her oldest-but-also-former friend killed at Remus' unwilling hands…

Or should that be unwilling paws… _jaws?_

…Maybe that is a little bit why she can't sleep.

It's _certainly_ not because an entire deck of unnervingly-revealing Tarot cards turned into The Lovers card after she essentially tug-of-warred over them with Potter. She might be taking Divination, but that doesn't mean she believes in it.

The main reason she can't sleep is the other girls in her dorms won't shut up.

"It has to be because of the riots after last year's match," says Gladys Gudgeon, sitting up in bed and patting her curlers. There's charms for perfect hair, but all the girls have seen them go wrong often enough that when it comes to beauty products and cosmetics, the preferred means are very Muggle. Lily has always taken a certain satisfaction from that.

"A few duels and detentions do not riots make," Annabeth Inglebee corrects impatiently from under her covers. "And while I'd suppose House tensions are even higher this year, seeing as we don't have a set of Prewett brothers to start trouble after losing their last Slytherin match—"

"Slytherin asked for it." Marlene, who's been sulking and silent since the Divination class incident, rises like a sheet-strewn banshee from her bed. "Been spending a lot of time over at the eagles' nest, Ann. Starting to forget which House you call home?"

"Whoever said I call this home?" Ann says.

"Please don't fight," says Felicia, from her perch on the end of Gladys' bed. Gladys is doing up Felicia's fine hair in a complicated crown braid, the kind Lily wouldn't know how to begin. "Not when tomorrow's such a happy day."

"Jumping things a bit, to already call it happy," Ann says. "I don't see why everyone's acting like this is such a great thing, cramming two perfectly good Saturdays together. It'll cut down on post-match celebrations, and it'll cut down on time in Hogsmeade—one or the other, if not both, must be the intention. I don't like it."

"But you never like much of anything," Marlene says, so sweetly that Lily props herself up on her elbows and moves her canopy drape. She wants an unobstructed view should mayhem ensue. "And you wouldn't know a good time if it smacked you on your stopped-up bung-hole—"

"Oh for Merlin's sake," Ann interrupts, unfazed, "at least when I'm over at Ravenclaw the insults follow a logical pattern. Therein is their sting—"

Marlene hops off her bed. "You want logic, Inglebee? I got myself three O.W.L.s more than you, how 'bout that, you sour feck, so even if you'd _begged_ the Sorting Hat—"

Lily would usually interfere at a point like this. But Marlene's clearly spoiling for a fight, and of everyone in the room, Lily's the most likely to really give her one. She's too tired to set herself up as target. Ann has the prefect's badge; she ought to be able to use it.

"_Gladys._ How does she know how many O.W.L.s I got?" Ann asks, uncharacteristically shaken.

"Happy day," Felicia repeats, fluttering her hands at Marlene.

Gladys tugs on Fee's half-done braid to keep her still so she can finish. "Are you meeting up with Sirius at all tomorrow, Fee?" Gladys asks, in a clear ploy to change the topic.

"You actually starting in with that again?" Marlene says, turning her roar on Gladys. "Black can go to Hades, and don't you put on your schoolmarm face and say otherwise, _Lils_."

"I'm half-asleep over here," Lily protests. _Schoolmarm face_? she thinks.

"That your way of telling me to shove it?" Marlene says.

"What's that?" Lily rubs her eyes and yawns as convincingly as she can.

"Marlene, you're really waking her up," Felicia says concernedly, "and Ann's in bed too, and what about your match tomorrow?"

Marlene scoffs, narrowed eyes still on Lily. "Potter's got me back on reserve what with Slytherin playing Regulus Black at Seeker. Those Blacks," she says ominously, "I _swear_."

Felicia gasps. "I can't believe James would do that to you! After last year!"

"What was last year?" Gladys presses. Lily assumes it's some Quidditch politics.

"Twenty Galleons," Marlene says, warming to her topic, "no, _fifty_, that Potter doesn't even trust little Kiely against Black at Seeker and takes the spot himself. Then I'll have a right laugh when he tries to call me back to fill Chaser. I've got Gideon Prewett coming up from London to meet me in Hogsmeade, so hang Potter and his match."

"Yes," Felicia says, with a bounce on the bed that upsets her hair, "and hang Black right along with Potter. Stupid boys who'd snog a girl and then forget about it."

Lily immediately props herself up in bed again, her stomach suddenly jerking, as Gladys goes, "Wait, Fee, what was that? You've been snogging James too? No fair!"

"Oh no," Fees says, blushing, "no, no, I meant—" She's trying not to look at Marlene.

"_That_ was last year. Potter and I snogged once or twice after wins," Marlene says briskly. "It never left the locker room. Only till Gideon wised up to how he felt about me, of course."

"Oh, of _course_," Ann says from under her covers.

"No one told me!" Gladys shrills. "Once, or twice? We won three times last year!"

Marlene shrugs and side-eyes Lily. "That we did."

Lily distinctly remembers running into James on his way from the pitch to the castle after last year's Ravenclaw match. His hair had been completely flat for once, plastered down with sweat. She'd grudgingly given him a "Nice flying, Potter" and gotten back the half-expected reply, "Nice enough to go out with me, Evans?" And his smile had been cheeky enough that even as she'd rolled her eyes, she'd… thought about it, for half-a-minute or so, after she kept walking on by.

Surely he couldn't have been coming from kissing Marlene, of all girls, just then. Surely any girl snogging James Potter would muss up his hair.

"I didn't mean to—to…" Felicia blusters.

Lily, suddenly, realizes that it's _her _Felicia's doing a poor job of trying not to look at. The other girls are blatantly watching for her reaction. She quickly loosens her hand, which has somehow clenched her quilt.

"Oh come along," she crabs at them all. "As if I'd care!" When their wary expressions don't change, she adds, "What do you imagine Potter is to me?! A pest, that's all."

"For the record," Marlene says. All her angry sullenness has relaxed into satisfaction. "The pest knows how to use his tongue."

Lily, pointedly, lies back down and shoves a pillow over her ears. Just in time, too, to muffle the sounds of Gladys asking further questions.

She doesn't manage much sleep that night.

* * *

Sometime after dawn, Lily gives up and gets up. She got bits and pieces of sleep, enough to tease her with half-awake snatches of dark dreams. Not enough to feel at all rested.

She puts on her crispest black robe, to feel a little more together, brushes her hair, and quietly makes for the library. Madam Pince has the library doors open with the sun, though it's catacombs empty and silent so early on a Saturday. Lily actually gets an approving nod from Pince for her seeming studiousness, as she makes for the Divination section.

The library's dark, too, if not tomb-dark. The light from the windows is dim, promising a clouded-over day, and only a few of the lights are on yet. The Tarot section's at the deep, far end of the Divination shelves. Lily feels increasingly like she's walking into a tunnel.

"_Lumos_," she whispers to her wand, and it illuminates a body on the floor, mere feet from her shoes, its back propped against the shelves.

She should shout. She should scream. But her throat closes off and she finds her mouth moving like a fish's as she instead rushes headlong at the body, hurrying to see its face, if it's alive.

Sirius Black's head jerks upright at the squeak of her shoes, and he reflexively throws a book from his lap at her.

It thuds and bounces off Lily's shoulder, clattering to the floor. She stops in front of him.

"I thought you were a murder victim," she says, annoyed.

"At Hogwarts?" Sirius says, blinking blearily. "In the library?"

"With a candlestick," Lily adds automatically.

Sirius repositions himself so he's properly sitting up against the shelf again. "How do you murder someone with a candlestick?" he asks.

"Er," Lily says. "Conk them over the head with it. Further bludgeoning."

"Interesting," Sirius says. "It'd take some good candle-sticking to actually murder a wizard, then. My mother once dropped an entire cast-iron stove on my uncle Alphard's head, and he just came to asking if that meant dinner was ready."

"Thick heads must run in your family."

Sirius looks down and pages through one of the books on his lap. "There's a lot that runs in my family," he says, too lightly.

Lily picks up the book he'd thrown at her, this time—_Cutting Cards: Cursed Decks, Truth, & Other Things That Can Kill You_—and sits down against the bookshelf opposite him. "There's a lot that runs in every family. More importantly, that was me calling you thick."

"I did realize that," Sirius says. "I'm not_ that_ thick."

"Sending someone to get eaten by a werewolf is as thick as it gets."

Sirius doesn't so much as look up from his book at Lily's reveal of what she's puzzled out (she's not a little disappointed). "No, nearly _getting_ eaten by a werewolf is as thick as it gets. He guessed what was there. What did he think was going to happen in that tunnel?"

"What did_ you_ think would happen? That he _would_ get eaten?"

"Suppose so, yeah. Only a little eaten," Sirius adds hastily. "He's been following us for years. It was going to happen eventually. Figured, give him what he wanted on our terms, scare him off." He stops paging and looks up, not at her but the ceiling. "James called it a 'misuse of trust'. Yelled other things I shouldn't repeat to you, but somehow that was the sticking one. He didn't specify if he meant his trust, or Remus', and both—"

"He meant Remus'," Lily says automatically.

"Yeah he did," Sirius agrees, finally looking at her, with something like appraisal.

"Good luck getting that trust back," Lily says. She opens the _Cutting Cards_ book. "Figured out your trick deck, then?" They had obviously come to the Tarot shelves with the same purpose.

"You do know it's not _my_—"

"You've never been one not to take credit for a prank," Lily interrupted. Except for maybe that Davy Gudgeon dare with the Whomping Willow last year, but it was only speculation that was Sirius. "I know. What've you got?"

He flipped his book over on his lap and held a picture in her direction. "I'd say it's a Trionfi deck," he says. "Fifteenth-century Italy. Supposed to only be pulled out on occasions like marriages, battles, peace treaties, because of the heavy Cheiro enchantment."

"Cheiro as in chiromancy?" Lily asks sharply, connecting the name for palmistry to how the cards had changed under Remus' touch, under her and James' small tug-of-war for them.

"Better believe it," Sirius says. "I heard you have the thing. Hand it over, will you?"

"Er, it's not with me now," Lily says. The bits of the remaining cards are somewhere up the flue of the Gryffindor chimney.

Sirius lazily raises his eyebrow. "Somewhere safe, is it? Because as a rare heirloom deck, it's worth a small fortune."

"How small a fortune?"

"Couple hundred Galleons. Thousand and some to the right buyer."

"…Is that all," Lily says weakly.

Sirius' eyebrow arches a little higher. "Wrecked it, did you?"

She thinks of the deck, molten and peeling apart in the fire. "…I might have a little."

"How wonderfully impetuous of you," Sirius says, in so laidback a tone she can't tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

"I thought it was some throwaway prank deck!" Lily pauses at thought at her own protest. "Not just anyone would use a fancy deck to mess with Marlene McKinnon. A deck rare enough we don't study it—probably handed down through a family?—and someone careless enough to use it—throw it in with class decks, throw it away into Auriga's hands really—"

"If you hadn't taken it first," Sirius interjects, but Lily waves that aside.

"—all for the sake of being, well—mean, or maybe, trying to be funny…" She looks down hard at the book in her hand, making a conscious effort from keeping her eyes from flicking to Sirius. In the end she fails.

"I know," Sirius says grimly. Even his eyebrow looks subdued. "All points to me, doesn't it?"

Lily studies him. "Or it points to a frame-up," she says. She feels very Miss Marple saying that.

"Snape," Sirius says automatically, then shakes the thought away before Lily can. "Nah, even I know he doesn't have that kind of money to throw away on hating me. And for what? If I sicced a werewolf on Snivellus and am still here, I'm not about to get expelled over Divination class. Auriga didn't even give me much of a telling off, listened to my protests and said something about innocent until proven guilty, then went to try to catch McKinnon."

"Curious Auriga didn't go back for the deck, presuming she recognized what it was."

"I don't suppose she expected you to take it," Sirius says, grinning. "Lily Evans, not-so-petty thief. Somehow I can't see past that. Wait till I tell—"

"Tell Potter, yes, very predictable, Black, I'm sure you two will have a good chuckle over me, assuming you ever get back on speaking terms," Lily says. Then she sighs. "Sorry. It's early. Was that school-marmish? Do I have a schoolmarm face?"

"What? Your face stays nice enough, even when you get— erm, tetchy. …Why are we talking about your face?"

"It was brought to my attention," Lily says. "I don't try to be a stick-in-the-mud, you know."

Sirius stares at her, looking genuinely taken aback, always rare for him. "Lily," he says slowly, "over the years you've locked broom closets James and I were hiding in a good seven times and knocked our heads together a good few more, _dueled_ with a Ravenclaw prefect who wouldn't take points off Slytherins bullying Mary Macdonald, dealt with said bullies yourself more times than I'm comfortable thinking about, made more people like you than you seem to even realize, and yesterday stole and destroyed a six-century-old magical artifact. You may get away scot-free when it comes to detentions, but that doesn't make you a stick in anything."

"Well," Lily says. She's trying not to blush and failing. "Well, Sirius, I…"

"That's observation, not compliment, so don't go fancying me or anything," he says, rolling his eyes. "Honestly, I can't say anything halfway nice to a girl without her hovering around and hinting about taking her to Hogsmeade—"

"Felicia," Lily says, a thought clicking.

"Exactly, like Felicia—"

"She normally works with Marlene," Lily interrupts. "They split up to see if you'd choose to sit with her, remember? Wait, what exactly does a heavy Cheiro enchanment _do_?"

"Lays out your soul or fate, or something," Sirius says. "Special occasions only, like I said. The enchantment gets, well, blunter with overuse, much less age, hence all the cards showing up the same—that's why it took me most of the night to figure out what it was, it wasn't working like a Trionfi deck is really supposed to, but I know my way around a prank set, and that was no prank set. For one, they usually turn up dirtier pictures—"

"It is the sort of deck a girl might use to see what's on a boy's mind, then," Lily says. "And Fortescue's an old wizarding family, aren't they?"

"Not by my family's 'sacred' standards, but they're hardly upstarts," Sirius agrees. "There have been Fortescues at Hogwarts since the seventeenth-century easy, and it wouldn't be a shock if some branch reached further back." He runs his hand through his hair in thought, almost Potter-like, except that Sirius' hair falls perfectly back in place. "They don't care a fig for old ideas, the Fortescues," he says carefully. "Fee's mom's a Muggle, lives right in Diagon and helps right at her in-law's shop. For years now, and it's still something of a to-do. My mother writes regular letters to the _Prophet _editor on it."

"I think I knew that," Lily says carefully. She doesn't bring up how every time Sirius' mother has a new letter published in the paper, often mentioning 'the corruption of youth' or otherwise obliquely referencing Sirius, some Slytherins plaster the whole school with copies. She's pretty sure last year she saw Regulus Black tacking one up himself. She definitely saw Potter dragging Pettigrew with him to pull leaflets down.

Sirius seems to be wrestling with his wording. "It's a fair guess, if it's hers, Felicia might not know what the deck's worth or care much besides what it could show her…"

"A fair guess, her family being what it is," Lily says, gathering as much, and when Sirius opens his mouth to protest, hurries to add, "I'm not saying you're stereotyping, it_ is_ fair. There's things about your world I don't know, or care, about, being Muggle-born."

"_Our_ world," Sirius corrects, grinning a little. "True enough. You did destroy a Trionfi deck before bothering to find out—"

"It bothered me," Lily says, exasperated. "And I did come here to find out what it was—"

"Past tense being very apt—"

Lily decides drowning him out is the best option. "So Felicia has motive, potential means, and, since she was in class before us, opportunity—"

"McKinnon didn't know, though," Sirius counters, back to business. He closes the book on his lap. "She never saw the card change coming, that was clear, so Fee would have had to get the deck past her. Don't you girls always tell each other all your plans and secrets?"

"Now you're stereotyping." Against her will, Lily thinks, sourly, of Marlene and Potter and locker rooms, and it's on the tip of her tongue to ask Sirius about it, but she clamps down on the words, because there's nothing she wants to know and asking him will only end with her curiosity eventually reaching Potter's ears. "Any other theories?"

"Rosier, for chaos' sake," Sirius says. "That, and he's my cousins' cousin and generally dislikes me. Or we're barking up the wrong tree—" He smiles suddenly, as if something's funny. "—and someone thought you'd sit with McKinnon, meaning the deck was intended for you, to scare you or show your secrets. Which, again, makes me think Snape, despite us ruling that out."

"He knows all my secrets," Lily says, grumpily.

"Really," Sirius says. "You're brewing Amortentia in NEWT Potions, what's that smell like to you?"

"Tarot cards hardly show smells, Sirius Black, and I could ask you the same—"

"Petrol," he answers promptly. "There's obviously no petrol at Hogwarts; that's how I knew you're brewing Amortentia. And I've also seen you watching everything you drink damn close, because while you'd never admit it and probably hate thinking it, the idea of Sn—someone slipping you some has crossed your mind." He shrugs, his shoulders bumping shelved books. "I watch it myself. Mary-Susan Perks keeps trying to hand me glasses of pumpkin juice. She's not too subtle, and like I was telling you, I'm _not_ that thick."

Lily, reeling, shakes her head. "This is observation, not a compliment," she warns. "But, Sirius, you actually are a bit brilliant."

"A bit," he scoffs. "Watch me do the crossword sometime." He thumbs through the pages of the book one last time and jumps to his feet. "Nothing more to find here, anyhow. It's down to asking Felicia, I suppose."

"And then what?" Lily gets up too. "If it is her, have her tell McKinnon and Auriga it was her? Why? You're not even in trouble—"

"I don't mind when I've given people a reason to be mad at me, which I do, plenty," Sirius say, re-shelving his pile of books, one shove at a time . "I don't like people taking against me when I've done nothing." He looks over at her. "You'd know something about that, I guess, people disliking you for no reason."

"They've got a reason," Lily reminds him. "They're pretty fixated on that reason."

"Pfft," Sirius says at once. "Blood. Idiot reason."

It occurs to Lily that with one onomatopoeia the boy in front of her has dismissed centuries of prejudice, ingrained in him since birth, as easily and thoughtlessly as he might blow away the wisps on a dandelion. Obviously, Sirius, who in the past month nearly ruined two lives, is deeply, deeply flawed. But in that one breath, more than anything he's said before or would maybe say in time to come, he's made himself impossible for Lily to dislike, ever again.

"Later, then, I suppose," Sirius says, lifting a hand. "I'll let you know what Felicia says. This whole thing might be ridiculous, and small, but the cards were still a cruel trick, in their small way. And I like to know who's turning tricks in this castle."

Lily's busy thinking, but she looks up at that, startled.

Already a few steps down the bookshelf tunnel, Sirius looks like he's startled himself. His still-lifted hand moves in the air, as if trying to strike out the words or physically reshape them, before he drops it to his side. "You know what I meant," he says, taking for granted she understands him in a way he never, ever would have before the past few weeks, and gets going again without further ado.

"Sirius," calls Lily. She can't really believe the words are coming out of her mouth, but she can't seem to stop them either, and her feet are rushing to catch up to him. "Don't take this the wrong way—"

"I always take everything the wrong way," says Sirius, reassuringly. "I have a talent for it."

She rolls her eyes—damn it, she thinks, she's really trying to break that habit—and picks up her pace to pass him. "It's fine, forget it, it's a lousy idea, anyway."

"Oh, go on then," he encourages. "I love lousy ideas." He's on her right side and looking over at her expectantly. It's a familiar pose from him, though she feels like she usually sees it at a distance.

"You're not going to Hogsmeade with Potter this weekend, are you." It's not a question.

He falls a step behind her. "Hasn't come up."

"You could—oh, hell," Lily says irritably, to the library at large, and with Sirius at her back, she says, "You could go along with me. If you liked."

There's a resounding silence behind her, not even footsteps. She glances over her shoulder, almost timidly.

Sirius is looking at her like she's smacked him over the head with a trophy shield (having in fact conked him a shield, way back in third year when interrupting a 'formal duel' between Severus and James to which Sirius stood a determined-to-prevent-interruption second, she's familiar with that particular expression: slightly pained, mostly dumbstruck).

"Well?" she says. "I told you not to take it the wrong way. As—company, Black. _Not_ a date."

"To be perfectly clear," Sirius says, "while I might have mentioned you have a nice face, I meant, generally nice, like a painting, not like I fancy you. Which I don't—"

"I should_ hope_ n—"

"—Obviously you're, well, something, for Hogwarts, but—"

"You can stop talki—"

"—you don't really have, er, sex appeal—"

Lily can't keep trying to desperately interrupt him. Her mouth's too busy hanging open.

"For me, that is," Sirius adds, suddenly a little desperate. "James seems to think you've got plenty, or at least that you're pretty enough to make up for the lack of it—"

"Where did you pick up that phrase? _That's a very Muggle phrase_." Wizards seemed to refer to the equivalent as 'oomph'.

"I read Muggle magazines and—"

"What sort of Muggle maga—_no-never-mind, I don't want to know_, and as _long as we're being clear_, _I don't fancy you either_."

And it's true, but still, hearing she lacks 'sex appeal' from an undeniably handsome— if somewhat off-puttingly so, not to mention slightly-off-kilter— boy her age, is still not exactly making Lily's morning.

"Well, then," Sirius says, sounding pleased.

(James Potter thinks she has sex appeal, a voice in the back of Lily's head says, but she shushes that. She basically knew that already).

"We can get a good view of the pitch from this one patch off by the woods, if you want to get a head start on the crowd for Hogsmeade," Sirius adds. "Or I can meet you in town, if you're skipping the match—" He breaks off. "Or have you changed your mind?"

"Nah," Lily says, imitating his easy dismissal. "We're going."

* * *

James Potter's first-ever match as Quidditch Captain goes like this:

The weather's awful, the cold and wind of November coming in weeks early with the rain. Potter does not put himself back in at Seeker, the position of his early years. He stays in at Chaser and sets up two assists by McKenzie on Mulciber at Keeper within the first three minutes of play. Potter then spends the better part of the next half-hour dodging a full-fledged assault by Beaters Burke and Slytherin Captain Rabastan Lestrange. Sykes, refereeing, calls foul but then can't manage to cite from memory the name of the foul against Bludger-targeting against one player. She lets it drop. McKenzie, meanwhile, a fourth-year, gets called for blagging, blatching, blurting, and then haver-sacking. Potter tries arguing with Sykes on the last one—it wasn't McKenzie's fault a Bludger knocked him, while holding the Quaffle, through the goal hoop. Twice. But still, neither score counts.

Something like an incredible quack rises from the Gryffindor sidelines a while later. Although McKinnon's not playing, some fan puts together that between McKenzie, McLaggen, and MacDougal, about half the Gryffindor side is "Mack"s and starts a chant of sorts. It's certainly easier than yelling a three-syllable House name, some of the Gryffindor crowd starts pointing at McGonagall as they cheer, and it absolutely drowns out Slytherin's attempt to shout "SHA-FIQ," their star Chaser.

Regulus Black, a spindly dark-haired blur in green, takes up the time-tested Seeker position of flying high above the field and circling like a particularly graceful buzzard. Gryffindor's Seeker Kiely, sparrow-quick and light, darts all around, completely exhausting himself in his excitement.

Another hour into the match, the score ekes upwards to 120-20, in favor of Gryffindor, largely because the third-year James had put in as Keeper, Barry Ryan, is actually a genius on the broom.

"Late addition," Sirius tells Lily as they watch from afar while Ryan drops and swings like a monkey from his broom to kick a Quaffle away. "Tibby McLaggen's played Keeper, but James moved him since he was, ah, short a Beater."

"He had you in as Beater," Lily says, because she vaguely remembers hearing grumblings back around September tryouts. "Potter kicked you off the Quidditch team?!"

"James should have never put me on the Quidditch team," Sirius mutters. "He only did it because he could now, but he didn't kick me off. Dumbledore said something like—" He shuffles his feet on the grass. "Detention was too small, for what I'd done, and no doubt I didn't want to draw any more attention to the incident than it already… Then he made this gentle comment about me playing games and how I need to learn better, and I sort of agreed, and next thing I knew he was telling McGonagall I had resigned from the Quidditch team and she was looking very, very relieved." Sirius pauses. "James was pretty busy being upset with me about all the other stuff, but he's relieved too."

"That's one way for Dumbledore to secretly favor Gryffindor, I suppose," Lily says at last, after a long moment of debating how to answer this confidence. "You must be _awful_."

Sirius throws back his head and laughs, much, much harder than her comment warrants. "I am," he almost gasps, and his laughter's so contagious she starts laughing too. And then high up near the Gryffindor goal post, Scabior and Shafiq collide hard with Potter and Knight, and out of the blur of bodies against the blue, Potter comes up with the Snitch.

Sirius and Lily could hear Sykes' whistle blowing, calling Snitchnip, and the entire game halts so the Snitch could be re-released. The game had been grueling along, full of fouls and little exciting, breakaway play, for two hours, and Hogsmeade's beckoning; a stream of students start leaving the match, heading with permission slips in hand for where Flitwick guards the Hogsmeade path.

Sirius and Lily finally stop laughing about the time game play returns.

"Radio in Hogsmeade does pick up the game broadcast," Lily mentions.

Sirius stands with his hands in robes pockets, watching James bend his broomstick around quick corners and roll away from Burke, passing the Quaffle off to McKenzie. Lily watches, too, not quite remembering James ever playing so much as part of a team before. The role of Captain sits surprisingly well on him.

"Yeah, why not," Sirius says. "I can see James fly any old time." And they leave their standing spot, on the grass, with a good view of the pitch, behind.

(If Sirius Black was really any good at Divination, he'd see that in seventeen years, he'd be back in the same spot, watching another dark-haired boy fly the same pitch with the same skill, feeling with every shred left in his heart the déjà vu of this day among so many others. But despite that Outstanding O.W.L., he's really not. It's only a Saturday in 1976, and even if it's raining and miserable, today is a happy day.)

Lily and Sirius walk away to Hogsmeade, while the game bruises and shudders its way along for another three hours, with no sign of the Snitch reappearing. The stands thin and quiet, still a good showing, but no chance of riot. Everyone, even some of the players, are more concerned with how soon they can get to the butterbeer, rather than who wins at this point. And the contest for the Snitch might not matter at all. Gryffindor's ahead by 140 points, mostly thanks to James Potter's maneuvering, even though his crowd's still shouting "Mack-Mack-Mack," and occasionally, when McLaggen does something really profound with a Bludger, "Mack Attack!" It's a sharp change from the adulation thrown Potter's way since late third year, and even in the air he feels it, but he's more concerned with the actual game.

One more goal, and even if Slytherin catches the Snitch, but Gryffindor wins the cup. One more goal.

Regulus Black sees a glimmer behind Kiely's head; he dives like a falcon and everyone in the crowd sees exactly what he's after, except poor exhausted Kiely, who turns and pivots but manages to keep missing the Snitch dancing behind him. James cannot will the Snitch into Kiely's hand, so he ignores the crowd and barrels towards the Slytherin goal with his fellow Chasers. The younger Black brother, within arms' length of the Snitch, takes a few embarrassing circles around the golden ball—

But he comes up with it in the end, finishing the game even as the Gryffindor Chasers set up one last play.

Gryffindor loses the match by ten points.

* * *

The radio, turned up loud, announces as much to the patrons of the Three Broomsticks. Rosmerta, walking up to Sirius and Lily's table to drop off more butterbeers, swears sharply under her breath.

"We in the Lion House appreciate the sentiment," Sirius says, grinning at Rosmerta despite the sudden gloom descending over the Gryffindor contingent.

"A consolatory one on the house for your better half when he gets off the pitch," Rosmerta mock-whispers, with a nod over to the radio.

"It'll need to be some strong consolation," Sirius says. Grinning like an absolute idiot, Lily thinks, amused.

Rosmerta snort-laughs and somehow manages to make even that sound sexy. "Sure thing, as soon as you're out of school."

"I'm seventeen next month," Sirius says cheekily.

"Doesn't do you any good, boy-o," Rosmerta says. "Nothing stronger than butterbeer for students here." Then she lowers her voice. "'Leastways, not on proper school Saturdays."

"Not even under the table?" Sirius says, dropping a wink.

"Ooh, this one's trouble," Rosmerta says to Lily, even more sotto voce. "It's the Hog's Head for the likes of him."

Rosmerta must be thirty or near it, but the way she winks back and sashays as she turns away makes Sirius' head whip around like Lily has never seen. Lily takes mental notes from Rosmerta, though she's not sure when she'll use them. Most of the really fanciable boys are gone from school, from the Prewett brothers to idiotic-_but_-gorgeous Quidditch star Ludovic Bagman to brilliant-_and_-gorgeous-_and_-nice Damocles Belby from Slug Club who was apparently too distracted with real life to reply to her letter. Some of them, Bagman for one over by the bar, are around Hogsmeade today, grouping together as close to school as allowed to cheer on their old glories.

"Secretly, her heart yearns for me," Sirius says to Lily, inclining his head towards Rosmerta and downing his butterbeer.

"So much she's trying to send you elsewhere," Lily says, watching Rosmerta lean laughingly over a table of older warlocks.

"That wasn't dismissal, that was a tip," Sirius says. "Rosmerta doesn't know you're about as likely to drink in the Hog's Head as—"

"I'd drink in the Hog's Head," Lily says.

Sirius studies her eyes for a moment and shakes his head. "Nah, you wouldn't."

Lily tips back her butterbeer, staring him down, and finishes it. She sets it down like a challenge.

"Hog's Head it is," Sirius says.

She's never been in the Hog's Head. She suggested it to Snape, more than once, but he said it was a bad idea, for her; she shocked the heck out of Damocles Belby when she suggested it on their one-and-only Hogsmeade date before he graduated. Somehow, Sirius seems just the person to go with; he's half-laughing in surprise and making faces at Rosmerta as he grabs the door of the pub for her.

"You don't seem too devastated by our loss," she says as they walk up Shop Street. Lily wonders if Sirius is secretly proud of Regulus.

"It's points that matter, when it comes to the Quidditch Cup," he says. "We'll beat Hufflepuff, and so will Slytherin, but Ravenclaw's going to massacre both Slytherin and Hufflepuff. It's all down to whether we beat Ravenclaw, or more how much we lose to them by. What with Blythe."

Blythe Parkin, the seventh-year Ravenclaw Seeker, is from what Lily understood practically Quidditch royalty, with a spot on the Wigtown Wanderers already waiting for her. She'd cinched the Cup for Ravenclaw every year since she was fifteen and won nearly every match before that.

Lily's opening her mouth to ask further questions. The thing is, she secretly loves Quidditch, though it was almost more fun, this once, to watch from a distance and listen to the play-by-play from radio. Severus used to answer her Quidditch questions, but never at a match, since they sat on opposite sides, and the answer usually only mattered in the moment. Only once or twice did Sirius not know and say, "You'd have to ask James," so distractedly it was as if he really forgot that she and James didn't get along.

She forgets what she's about to say when Marlene McKinnon comes slamming out Madam Puddifoot's and stamping out into the street some distance ahead of them.

"Marlene?" calls Lily, but not loudly enough.

Sirius glances down at Lily, then cups his hand around his mouth. "Oi, Mack!"

A few Gryffindors late from the match take it up as they stroll by: "Mack-Mack-Mack!", the original intention lost.

Still, McKinnon whirls, face glowing in the early twilight, all ease and eagerness. Her hair shine and her makeup's perfect, if a little over-applied. Regardless of what she thinks of her, it makes Lily sad to watch Marlene's face fall as her eyes find their faces. Gideon Prewett calls Marlene that sometimes, too, she knows, and Lily looks for his bright hair inside the dim lighting of Madam Puddifoot's. Nary a ginger Hit Patrolman in sight.

"Ah, Black," Marlene says. "It's only you."

Sirius looks a bit unnerved by her bitter tone. Last time they spoke was over cards, Lily supposes, and Marlene knocking over him and his chair. "And Lily," he says, gesturing.

Lily bumps him with her elbow. "Not what she meant," she mutters, then to Marlene, "Where you heading?"

"To get sloshed," says Marlene curtly. "I'd ask you along, but— "

"We're off to the Hog's Head, actually," Lily replies. "You too?"

Marlene's eyes crinkle. "You're not going to drink there, Lils," she says. "You're going there to look around and feel a tiny bit dangerous so, later—"

"No, I think drinking was specifically invoked in the plan," Lily says flatly.

"That is true," Sirius says, looking between them a little uneasily.

"Have a start on me, then," Marlene says, coming closer and reaching into her robe pocket. Lily briefly sees a fiercely-crumpled envelope and then suddenly a flask is being thrust at her.

"Oh, come on, McKinnon," Sirius starts, but Lily meets Marlene's dark eyes evenly, takes the flask with a small smile, and takes a sip.

She took too much of a sip, she realizes immediately; the liquid's sweet, with a hint of cinnamon, but burning and it's all she can do not to choke. She hands it back, unable to speak, but forcing the small smile back on her face.

Marlene then hands it to Sirius, who, despite his wide eyes, shrugs and takes more of a gulp than Lily deems wise.

"Ogden's," he says. "Nice."

They've somehow formed a little circle, hiding the flask with their backs. The sun hasn't even set yet, Lily thinks wildly, though it's on its way there. They're supposed to be back within the castle gates by 8:30 or… she isn't really sure what comes after 'or,' since she's always been back well in advance. She's known Hogwarts students who've lost privileges coming back drunk, and others who've giggled about faking sobriety on their way past the teachers, but she's never spent much time with that bunch. Marlene takes a dangerously long swing and passes it back to Lily.

"Were you putting this in your tea in Puddifoot's?" Lily asks.

"Let's leave it at, it's been a long day," Marlene says, watching as Lily takes another sip. There isn't much left, and it doesn't burn quite as much the second time. She tried drinking exactly one time this past summer, in trying to reconnect with some of the Muggle girls in her neighborhood, but regular liquor didn't make her feel as flushed as this. If butterbeer's immediately warming, firewhiskey's like standing too close to a furnace with no way to back away.

"Did you finish that?" Sirius says, pointing at Lily. Marlene bats his hand down, and he rears away at the action, annoyed.

"Subtlety, Black," Marlene says. "Or is that not in your spellbook?"

"I didn't think it was in yours," he says.

"Don't arch your eyebrow at me," Marlene snaps, because that's exactly what he's doing.

"Because you can't make only one eyebrow do it, and that makes it hideously annoying?" Lily says, and when Marlene turns back towards her with a squint, she adds, "Me too!"

"Well," Marlene says, a little of the hardness in her expression falling away. She tucks the empty flask away and marches forward. "Hog's Head then. What's with the face, Black? Only now realizing you're living one of James Potter's fantasies, and that may not go over so well with him, seeing how it doesn't really seem to be his day?"

"Oh don't say that," Lily says, feeling the flush even more. She's uneasy with the words 'James Potter' and 'fantasy' in the same sentence, and, too, James seems to be the one spot it seems unfair to tease Sirius about.

Sirius scowls. "I got the sudden feeling this is going to end with me in Azkaban."

"Not a bad idea," Marlene says, "Gideon arrests people. Maybe then he'd actually show up." Marlene's doing an imitation of Rosmerta's sashay, Lily notices. It's decidedly an imitation, but not a terrible one. She looks at Sirius, who also seems to be noticing, in his more typical, casually bored way.

The Hog's Head is dingier up close than Lily remembers it looking from a distance. Sirius is looking up and down the street at passing students, obviously keeping an eye out for his semi-estranged friends, while Marlene, a few sashays ahead, has grabbed the door.

Lily's starting to feel the firewhiskey. "Full responsibility is mine," she says, linking arms with Sirius. His expression suggests she grew a second set of arms rather than simply grabbed his. "You won't get arrested on my watch."

"I'll hold you to that," he warns, and suddenly they're within, and it's getting dark without.

* * *

Sirius and Marlene elect to keep sending Lily up for drinks, because, Marlene admits, "No one is going to say no to you." This seems to be true, and also, Lily's not entirely sure who's paying for their drinks anymore, just that they keep coming, though she makes sure they're all in bottles and that she watches them as they're opened. Too many people are in hoods here, and she was friends with Snape long enough to know exactly how many emotions and dangers can be slipped into a drink. Marlene says it's a big crowd for here, even though the place is half-empty. There's a lot of weird-looking older folks, but a decent number of students, especially seventh-year boys. The Quidditch teams must have showed up in town, since a girl in Slytherin team robes is making out with a boy in Gryffindor's red. Lily thinks they're younger than she is. There's also a whole group of thick-accented boys about her age near the bar.

"If we miss the return curfew, I've got six and a half ways to get us back into the castle," Sirius says, head lolling a little, as Lily returns with their three bottles of dwarf-brewed beer.

"And say we were back all along?" Marlene mocks, then blinks and says, "Oh, actually, that could work. Felicia said you were talking to her about secret passages."

"Was I?" Sirius says, looking to Lily as if she has the answer. It's like he's forgotten that whole thing.

Marlene's crumpled letter from Gideon is spread out on the table, and she's already complained about how he apparently forgot about meeting her. It only came after she'd been waiting for hours; it's only a line or two about being busy and the whips—the Wizarding Hit Patrol both Prewett brothers are part of—preparing for some rumored trouble tonight. And, Marlene says, it's clearly in Fabian's handwriting, meaning Gideon himself couldn't be bothered or hadn't remembered and Fab was covering for him.

Lily wonders vaguely if all boys forget and dismiss kisses as airy nothings, a little fun, while girls count them up and remember and make them mean things they didn't. No, now _that_'s stereotyping— she's sitting right next to Marlene, after all. Marlene seems willing to forget the whole card thing, and maybe Gideon too, since she's definitely giving Sirius the eye right over her letter. But who knows what Marlene really thinks? It's hard, right here, not to think about what she heard last night about last year and Marlene and James Potter and the locker room. And who Potter might be kissing in locker rooms this year. And why she even cares.

Lily's feeling suddenly a little ill. She keeps sipping her beer.

"Where is Felicia?" she asks Marlene.

"I don't know, Honeyduke's?" Marlene says. Wispy as she is, Felicia loves her sweets. "Gladys came in earlier to brag they were walking around with boys with accents."

"There's boys with accents at the bar," Lily says, remembering.

"Fee's from London, you're from Cokeworth, and this is Scotland," Marlene says. "To you the local boys have accents."

"No," Lily says, shaking her head, trying to place the accent. She's visited her Hufflepuff friend, Greta, whose mother is German, from another wizarding school. Durmstrang. The accents might not be quite German, but they did sound decidedly Germanic.

"James," Sirius says, sitting bolt upright, and Lily looks up. Sure enough Potter has just walked in, and without meaning to, she's met his eyes and it's a little bit electric. Unless he's making eye contact with Sirius right next to her, and she simply also happens to be looking at him. She's not entirely sure.

"Am I a bit drunk?" Lily asks Marlene nervously.

Marlene is the only one of them not staring at James, since she's busy lighting her letter on fire. "A bit?" she repeats, like it's hilarious.

And that's when the street very literally explodes.


End file.
